67C 



STAMMERING 



STAMPS 



may have come to be established in the usage of 

 them respectively would seem to be that stuttering 

 an onomatotMeir word is now limited more or 

 less to the futile repetition of sounds, while stum- 

 niering (akin to 'stamp,' 'stump,' 'step.' 'stop') 

 covers the whole defect, the hesitation, glide, stop, 

 holding on to the sound as well as repeating it. 

 With defective articulation due to malformation 

 cleft palate, high-roofed mouth, disproportionate j 

 tongue and tonsils ; or due to affectation and had ', 

 habit interjection of meaningless sounds, lisping, 

 burring, ana other such imperfections of speech, 

 we have nothing further to do in this article, be- 

 yond remarking that a fault of habit may l>e 

 entirely cured, a faulty formation con only be 

 mended, its irksomeness alleviated. 



Since speech at a high degree of excellence is a 

 fruit of advanced civilisation, it is not startling to 

 be told that stammering does not prevail among 

 Negroes in Africa and North American Indians. 

 But when it is proved to be pretty wide-spread in 

 Prussia, Great Britain and its colonies, and the 

 United States of America, and uncommon in Italy 

 and Spain, the question suggests itself whether 

 languages of Teutonic origin are not more apt to 

 generate stammering than languages of Latin 

 origin. A much larger proportion of males stam- 

 mer than of females. 



Stammering, the chief of the imperfections of 

 speech, may be hereditary, and it may be acquired 

 by imitation. Like yawning, it is infectious. It 

 may be the abiding result of mental strain or 

 shock. Fever may bring it on, epilepsy, hysteria, 

 any nervous affection, temporary failure of health, 

 any excitement, soreness of the mouth. It rarely 

 shows itself earlier than at four or five years of age. 

 It usually begins in youth, but may be produced 

 at any later age. It used to be ascril>ed exclusively 

 to the organ of articulation, the mouth ; to faulty 

 setting of the teeth or the jaws, to the largeness 

 and thickness of the tongue, its weakness of move- 

 ment, its excessive vigour. The cause indicates 

 the cure. A wedge was cut out of the tongue, 

 lengthways, to make a path for the current of air. 

 The root of the tongue was cut to break its ex- 

 cessive vigour. The tongue was thought to lie too 

 flat on the bottom of the mouth ; a plug was 

 inserted to raise it, Demosthenes and the pebbles 

 being referred to. It was one of the secret cures 

 to tell the stammerer to keep the tip of his tongue 

 on the roof of his mouth. An improvement on this 

 was to keep the whole breadth of the tongue lying 

 on the palate. When, by-and-by, the breathing 

 began to be taken into account, stammering was 

 explained exclusively by reference to the organ of 

 respiration, and the cure was breathing exercises 

 which were kept secret. The latest step in the 

 research for the cause and cure of stammering has 

 been to take full account of the vocal chords or 

 cushions and the vocal chink. 



Stammering occurs in the mouth, the organ of 

 articulation. Its proximate cause is always in the 

 larynx, the organ of voice. Sometimes the lungs, 

 the organ of breathing, complicate the uncertainty 

 and unsteadiness of tne vocal chords and the vocal 

 chink in the larynx. A current of air, variously 

 shaped by the mouth as a whole, is what we call a 

 vowel. A stammer on a vowel can only take 

 place in the vocal chink, rima glottidis. The 

 sounds called consonant* are produced by closures, 

 more or less firm, of contents of the mouth. Thus, 

 I', I', in, to, by the closure of the two lips;/, /, of 

 the lower lip and upper teeth ; ;/ soft and sh, of the 

 teeth ; / and f/i, tongue and upper teeth ; I, d, n, 

 t, z, y, tip of the tongue and fore gum ; g hard and 

 /.-, bock edges of the tongue and back gum. Stam- 

 mering may occur at any of these six closures. It 

 is, perhaps, most apt to occur at the labials b, />, 



the dentals <l, t, the gutturals g hard, k. because 

 for these the closure is firmest. The stammerer 

 bus no difficulty in setting lips, teeth, tongue, and 

 gums against each other OH required. His difficulty 

 is to relieve the closure, to get at the vowel which 

 is to follow the consonant. The tongue, for 

 i-vimple. will not part with the teeth, seems to 

 cling spasmodically to them. Why? Because the 

 current of air, the vowel, does not come at the 

 proper instant through the vocal chink to relieve 

 it. In this way the three observable modes of 

 stammering are explained. If the vocal chink does 

 not open soon enough there is a stop stammer ; if 

 it flutters, there is a stutter ; if it opens I<K> soon, 

 there is a glide stammer. But, further, the lungs 

 expand and contract by nervous and muscular 

 energy ; and, besides, tlie muscular and nervous 

 machinery of the breastbone, iili.-. midrili, and 

 upper abdomen are all concerned in that expansion 

 and contraction. These complicated and delicate 

 bellows which supply air under pressure to the 

 organ of voice may be defective, out of order, 

 misused. Their working is to be closely olwerved 

 in the case of each stammerer. Stammerers, as a 

 rule, breathe badly. They constantly try to speak 

 when their lungs are empty. 



Stammering can be cured. It often disappears 

 gradually without effort at cure. Improvement 

 generally takes place as age advances. In some 

 coses resolute endeavour is demanded. A waving 

 motion of the arms, time kept to a baton, were 

 favoured as cures at one time. They were on the 

 lines of the musical methods of cure intoning, 

 chanting, singing which were based on the fact 

 that most stammerers can sing. The doctrine 

 of this article suggests as instructions for cure : 

 Regulate the breath. Work for an habitual use 

 of the chest voice i.e. for deeper, steadier vibra- 

 tion of the vocal chords because people gener- 

 ally stammer in a head voice. Take exercise, in a 

 chest voice, on the sounds (seldom vowels) at 

 which a stumble is apt to be made. 



Stamp Act. a measure which required all legal 

 documents in the colonies to bear stamps, proposed 

 by Grenville, then premier, and passed by parlia- 

 ment in 1765. The Americans denied the right to 

 the English parliament, in which they were not 

 represented, to impose taxes upon them, and offered 

 violent opposition. Riots took place in many of 

 the towns, the offices were seized, and the stamped 

 paper destroyed ; while a congress of delegates of 

 nine of the states met at New York in October, 

 and passed resolutions claiming for the provincial 

 assemblies the exclusive right of taxation. In the 

 January of 1766 the subject was brought Iwfore 

 parliament. In the great debate that followed 

 Burke made his maiden speech, and Pitt, who had 

 been absent for a year, in one of his greatest 

 speeches denied the absolute right of parliament to 

 tax the colonies, as taxation and representation 

 went hand in hand. After examining witnesses, 

 chief among them Franklin, the ministry pnmoMd 

 the repeal of the Stamp Act, and carried it on 

 February 21. Thus Pitt's wisdom staved off 

 for a time the breach between England and her 

 colonies. 



Stamps, impressed and adhesive, are exten- 

 sively used for making and verifying payments of 

 money. Stamp-duties were first imposed in Eng- 

 land in 1694 ; the basis of the existing law is the 

 Stamp Act of 1870; see Griffith's Digest of the Slum/, 

 l>ntics (9th ed. 1888). For the protection of the 

 public revenue penalties are imposed ; thus any 

 person receiving a premium of insurance without 

 issuing a properly stamped policy is liable to a line. 

 Where the law requires a stamp, an unstamped 

 document cannot be given in evidence in civil 



