For this reason, it is not advisable for parents to allow children to play with others who stutter or stammer, nor is it charitable to allow a child who stutters or stammers to play with other children who are not so afflicted.

So far-reaching are the effects of Imitation or Mimicry that in certain cases, children have been known to contract stuttering from associating with a deaf-mute whose expressions were made chiefly in the form of grunts and inarticulate sounds.

Fright or severe nerve shock:  Another common cause of stammering is fright or nervous shock, which may have been brought about in countless ways.  One boy who came to me some time ago stated that he had swallowed a nail when about six years of age and that this was the cause of his stammering.  The logical conclusion in a case like this would be that the nail had injured the vocal organs, but an examination proved that there was no organic defect and that the stammering was caused, not by injury directly to the vocal organs but by the nervous shock occasioned by swallowing the nail.

Another case was that of a stammerer who reported that he had been given carbolic acid, by mistake, when a child and that he had stammered ever since.  This, like the case of the boy who swallowed the nail, might be expected to prove a case of absolute physical injury or impairment of the vocal chords, but once again, it was clear that such was not the case and that the stammering was brought about solely from the nervous shock which came as a result of taking carbolic acid.

There is still another case of a boy who felt that he was continually being followed.  This was of course merely a hallucination, but the fright that this boy’s state of mind brought on soon caused him to stutter and stammer in a very pronounced manner.

Fright is a prolific cause of stuttering in small children and may be traced in a great many cases to parents or nurses who persist in telling children stories of a frightful nature, or who, as a means of discipline, scare them by locking them up in the cellar, the closet or the garret.  To these scare-tales told to children should be added the misguided practice of telling children that “the bogey-man will get you” or “the policeman is after you” or some such tale to enforce parental commands.  An instance is recalled of a woman who created out of a morbid imagination a phantom of terrible mien, who abode in the garret and was constantly lying in wait for the small children of the household with the professed intention of “eating them alive.”