t know where I am, or what I am doing!" I found this
boy to be extremely high-strung and of a nervous temperament, easily
excited. He was of an emotional type, was more-than-ordinarily
sensitive about his trouble and brooded over it constantly, having long
fits of deep melancholia that were a constant source of worry to his
parents. He was furthermore at a critical age, from the standpoint of
his speech development, just approaching 16. Although naturally of an
agreeable disposition, his trouble had made him irritable and often
sullen. He wore an air of dejection almost constantly. It was evident
to me immediately upon examination that his trouble had had a grave
effect upon his mind and that it would in time (and not so long a time,
either) have a deep and permanent effect that no amount of effort could
eradicate.

It would be naturally expected that his symptoms would indicate
Thought-Stammering, but this is not true. Instead I found his to be a
bad case of Spasmodic Stammering, in which the convulsive action took
place immediately upon an effort to speak and which resulted,
therefore, in the inability to express a sound--the "sticking" tendency
so common to stammering and particularly to this type.

While the worry over his stammering had left him in a mental state that
made him impotent so far as normal mental accomplishments were
concerned, still the removal of his stammering by the eradication of
the cause would, I felt, entirely relieve the condition of mental
flurry and stop the nervousness.

The case was so urgent that the boy's parents decided to place him for
treatment immediately. The results were so gratifying as to be almost
unbelievable. By the end of the first day's work, the boy's whole
mental attitude was changed. His outlook on life was different. He felt
the thrill of conquering his difficulty and before many days, he was
working like a Trojan to make his cure complete and permanent. At my
suggestion, he remained with me for seven weeks, at the end of which
time he went back East, entirely changed in every particular. He was
smiling now, where before he seemed to have forgotten how to smile. He
was full of life, enthusiasm and ambition--no one who had seen him the
day he first came here, could realize that this was the same boy that
entered a few weeks before with the desire-to-live almost extinct.
There are hundreds of cases riot far different from this--I have cited
the case of this Polish boy t