is trouble had
become steadily worse, he said, until it had ruined his control over
himself. He had become nervous, irritable and cross, without meaning to
be so, had lost one good position after another and finally, as a
climax to a long string of misfortunes, his wife had left him,
declaring that she would not put up with him in such a condition.

A second examination revealed the fact that his stammering had
progressed so rapidly since he had last talked with me, that it was now
perilously near the stage known as Thought Lapse. His control was not
entirely shattered, however, and he was accepted for treatment. It was
something over two months before he was back in shape again, but those
two months did a wonderful thing for him, for it put him in first-class
physical condition, removed all traces of his impediment and restored
the mental equilibrium which had been so long endangered. Later, as a
result of his restoration to perfect speech, his family differences
were adjusted, and at the last reports, he was making splendid headway
in a business of his own. Such is the power of stammering to
destroy--even home and happiness itself--and such the power of perfect
speech to build up again.

Case No. 465.722--This was the case of a man born in Ireland, who came
to this country as a boy, and the original cause of whose trouble was a
blow over the head in a street fight soon after landing in America.

When he came to me, he was 52 years of age and not only had one of the
most severe cases of Spasmodic Stammering I have ever seen, but was in
the first stages of Thought Lapse. He was practically speechless all of
the time and his trouble instead of manifesting an Intermittent
Tendency as it had formerly done, was now constant, indicating that he
was in the chronic stage of his difficulty. Aside from his Spasmodic
Stammering, he seemed unable to think of the things which he wished to
say. In other words, his trouble had been affecting him so long that he
had lost the power to recall and control the mental images necessary to
the formation of words.

I not only gave him the usual examination but applied the special Bogue
test, both of which convinced me that his case was far into the
incurable stage. There was little or nothing I could do for him at that
late date and so I told him. He acted as if dazed for a few moments,
and when the full force of the truth dawned upon him, it was as if a
cord had snapped and broken. Hope