Case No. 84.563—­This case first came to my attention over ten years ago, when I was called upon to make a diagnosis.  This showed the trouble to be a case of Combined Stammering and Stuttering, originally caused, it seemed, from having associated with an old man who was janitor in a wood-working plant belonging to the father of the boy whose case I am describing.  The janitor had stammered ever since anyone about the place had known him and probably all of his life.  In his early days, with his youth to carry him on, he had tried to hold down several jobs of consequence, but with varying success, dropping down the ladder rung by rung until he reached the place of janitor.  The boy in question, having associated with the old man, early acquired the habit of mocking his defective speech, with the result that he himself soon began to stutter, which later turned into a combined form of disorder known as Combined Stammering and Stuttering.

He came to me at the time he was 28, having found it necessary to go to work on his own account, upon the failure of his father’s business.  I explained to him that his was a case of Combined Stammering and Stuttering, outlined to him the probable course of his trouble and what he might reasonably expect if he allowed it to continue.  Having been married only a short time and being rather reluctant to leave home for the length of time necessary to take the course, he decided to postpone treatment until some later date.  I heard nothing more from him for almost three years, when he walked in one day, looking like a shadow of his former self.  There were dark rings around his eyes, his gaze was shifty and I could hardly believe that this was the young fellow who had seen me three years ago.  Nevertheless it was the same man, with a story that pointed out the danger of postponement.  His 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.