STAMMERING A SIGN OF BRAINS

Evening Star, Issue 19661, 14 September 1927, Page 2

STAMMERING A SIGN OF BRAINS

NOTABLE ENGLISH EXAMPLES. In a loiter which appeared the other day in the correspondence columns, a reader of tho ‘ Daily Chronicle ’ requested somo information on the subject of stammering. f should bo very pleased to supply that information if it wore really available, but unfortunately it is not (says a well-known medical man). _ Nevertheless, there are some facts in connection with this affliction which may be. of interest to the general reader. Stammering has been defined as “a functional disturbance of tho central nervous system, congenital or acquired, characterised by involuntarily disorderly spasms in certain muscles concerned in vocal utterance.” Another authority described it more tersely as “a St. Vitus’ dance of the finer muscles of speech.’! Tt is said to bo specially associated with rapid growth of tho bruin and to bo most likely to show itself between birth and the seventh year. Many people who have stammered quite badly in childhood gradually “grow out of it ” and lose it completely at full maturity. ft is therefore much less common in adults than it is in children, and is three to four times more frequently met in men than it is in women. Some people regard a certain measure of it as an attraction in women, and i have known one young woman who deliberately affected it because she found that it lent a certain distinction to a friend of hers.

Stammering is very often found in people with very exceptional brain {lower, associated, however, with an unduly sensitive nervous system, ft is obviously due to a lack of co-ordina-tion, which in other words means a loss of the higher control. In his recent book on ‘British Genius,’ Mr Havelock Ellis states that stammering has afflicted quite a number of Englishmen of outstanding ability, among whom ho mentions Charles Lamb, Hilaries Kingsley, Priestley, and Erasmus Darwin. He might have added Lord Balfour and Mr Churchill, both of whom are occasionally afflicted with a kind ot hesitation before they get under way, which almost amounts to slight stammering In tlio same work Havelock Ellis refers to a slight paralysis of the vocal chords as possibly accounting for the tendency to a very high-pitched voice, which ho finds to be remarkably common in men of intellectual ability.

This statement, I confess, surprised mo very much. It is ray own experience and that most (though not all) of my friends whom I have consulted on the subject, that a very largo majority of the exceptionally able men whom I have heard speak were endowed with a true bass voice, the cadences of which were very pleasing to the ear.