Stuttering Warning: You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.Anti-spam check. Do not fill this in! ==History== [[File:LewisCarrollSelfPhoto.jpg|thumb|[[Lewis Carroll]], the well-known author of'' [[Alice's Adventures in Wonderland]]'', had a stammer, as did his siblings.]] Because of the unusual-sounding speech that is produced and the behaviors and attitudes that accompany a stutter, it has long been a subject of scientific interest and speculation as well as discrimination and ridicule. People who stutter can be traced back centuries to [[Demosthenes]], who tried to control his disfluency by speaking with pebbles in his mouth.<ref name="brosch">{{cite journal |author=Brosch, S |author2=Pirsig, W. |title=Stuttering in history and culture |journal=Int. J. Pediatr. Otorhinolaryngol. |volume=59 |issue=2 |pages=81–7 |year=2001 |pmid=11378182 | doi = 10.1016/S0165-5876(01)00474-8 }}</ref> The [[Talmud]] interprets [[Bible]] passages to indicate that [[Moses]] also stuttered, and that placing a burning coal in his mouth had caused him to be "slow and hesitant of speech" (Exodus 4, v.10).<ref name="brosch"/> [[Galen]]'s humoral theories were influential in Europe in the Middle Ages for centuries afterward. In this theory, stuttering was attributed to an imbalance of the [[four bodily humors]]—yellow bile, blood, black bile, and phlegm. [[Hieronymus Mercurialis]], writing in the sixteenth century, proposed to redress the imbalance by changes in diet, reduced libido (in men only), and [[vomiting|purging]]. Believing that fear aggravated stuttering, he suggested techniques to overcome this. Humoral manipulation continued to be a dominant treatment for stuttering until the eighteenth century.<ref name="rieber">{{cite journal |author=Rieber, RW |author2=Wollock, J |title=The historical roots of the theory and therapy of stuttering |journal=Journal of Communication Disorders |volume=10 |issue=1–2 |pages=3–24 |year=1977 |pmid=325028 | doi = 10.1016/0021-9924(77)90009-0 }}</ref> Partly due to a perceived lack of intelligence because of his stutter, the man who became the [[Roman emperor]] [[Claudius]] was initially shunned from the public eye and excluded from public office.<ref name="brosch"/> In and around eighteenth and nineteenth century Europe, surgical interventions for stuttering were recommended, including cutting the tongue with scissors, removing a triangular wedge from the posterior tongue, and cutting nerves, or neck and lip muscles. Others recommended shortening the [[uvula]] or removing the [[tonsil]]s. All were abandoned due to the danger of bleeding to death and their failure to stop stuttering. Less drastically, [[Jean Marc Gaspard Itard]] placed a small forked golden plate under the tongue in order to support "weak" muscles.<ref name="brosch"/> [[File:Notker Balbulus 2.jpg|thumb|left|[[Notker the Stammerer|Notker Balbulus]], from a medieval manuscript]] Italian [[pathologist]] [[Giovanni Battista Morgagni|Giovanni Morgagni]] attributed stuttering to deviations in the [[hyoid bone]], a conclusion he came to via [[autopsy]].<ref name="rieber"/> Blessed [[Notker of St. Gall]] ({{circa|840}} – 912), called Balbulus ("The Stutterer") and described by his biographer as being "delicate of body but not of mind, stuttering of tongue but not of intellect, pushing boldly forward in things Divine," was invoked against stammering.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Townsend |first=Anselm |date=December 1928 |title=The Christmas Sequence |url=https://archive.org/details/sim_dominicana_1928-12_13_4/ |journal=[[Dominicana (journal)|Dominicana]] |location=Washington, D.C. |volume=13 |issue=4 |pages=281 |via=[[Archive.org]]}}</ref> A royal Briton who stammered was King [[George VI]]. He went through years of speech therapy, most successfully under Australian speech therapist [[Lionel Logue]], for his stammer. The Academy Award-winning film ''[[The King's Speech]]'' (2010) in which [[Colin Firth]] plays George VI, tells his story. The film is based on an original screenplay by [[David Seidler]], who also stuttered until age 16. Another British case was that of Prime Minister [[Winston Churchill]]. Churchill claimed, perhaps not directly discussing himself, that "[s]ometimes a slight and not unpleasing stammer or impediment has been of some assistance in securing the attention of the audience ..."<ref name="fn 10">{{cite web | title=Churchill: A Study in Oratory | publisher=The Churchill Centre | url=http://www.winstonchurchill.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=814 | access-date=2005-04-05 | url-status=dead | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20050419061110/http://www.winstonchurchill.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=814 | archive-date=2005-04-19 }}</ref> However, those who knew Churchill and commented on his stutter believed that it was or had been a significant problem for him.<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.utstat.utoronto.ca/sharp/Churchill.htm |title=Churchill Stutter |access-date=2012-01-28 |archive-date=2012-01-13 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120113145826/http://www.utstat.utoronto.ca/sharp/Churchill.htm |url-status=dead }}</ref> His secretary [[Phyllis Moir]] commented that "Winston Churchill was born and grew up with a stutter" in her 1941 book ''I was Winston Churchill's Private Secretary''. She related one example, "'It's s-s-simply s-s-splendid,' he stuttered—as he always did when excited." Louis J. Alber, who helped to arrange a lecture tour of the United States, wrote in Volume 55 of ''The American Mercury'' (1942) that "Churchill struggled to express his feelings but his stutter caught him in the throat and his face turned purple" and that "born with a stutter and a [[lisp]], both caused in large measure by a defect in his palate, Churchill was at first seriously hampered in his public speaking. It is characteristic of the man's perseverance that, despite his staggering handicap, he made himself one of the greatest orators of our time." For centuries "cures" such as consistently drinking water from a snail shell for the rest of one's life, "hitting a stutterer in the face when the weather is cloudy", strengthening the tongue as a muscle, and various [[Herbalism|herbal remedies]] were tried.<ref name="fn 6">{{cite web | author = Kuster, Judith Maginnis | title = Folk Myths About Stuttering | publisher = [[Minnesota State University, Mankato|Minnesota State University]] | date = 2005-04-01 | url = http://www.mnsu.edu/comdis/kuster/Infostuttering/folkmyths.html | access-date = 2005-04-03 | url-status = live | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20050419090029/http://www.mnsu.edu/comdis/kuster/Infostuttering/folkmyths.html | archive-date = 2005-04-19 }}</ref> Similarly, in the past people subscribed to odd theories about the causes of stuttering, such as [[tickling]] an infant too much, eating improperly during [[breastfeeding]], allowing an infant to look in the mirror, cutting a child's hair before the child spoke his or her first words, having too small a tongue, or the "work of the devil".<ref name="fn 6"/> Summary: Please note that all contributions to Christianpedia may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. 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