Stammering and Cognate Defects of Speech
By C. S. Bluemel. New York: G. E. Stechert and Co., 1913, 2 vols. Pp. x + 365 -f 391. Volume I of Mr. Bluemel’s work deals with what he calls the psychology of stammering, Volume II with contemporaneous systems of treating stammering. It may be that the author has set himself an impossible task, in attempting to cover the whole ground of physiological psychology, including a discussion of brain structure, neuronal action, types of mental imagery, and the vast subject of aphasia, both congenital and traumatic, within the limits of a single volume, but there is obviously a wide discrepancy between his aim and his accomplishment. The psychology which he offers us is largely out of date. Moreover in condensing and simplifying his material he falls into many curious errors of statement, for example (page 71), “The memory-centers are remarkable in that they are located in the left hemisphere of the brain in right-handed persons, and in the right hemisphere in left-handed persons”; or again (page 161) where in speaking of aphasics he says, “Singing may be easier for these patients, because it is a mechanical rather than a thought process.”
In his choice of nomenclature Mr. Bluemel does not appear to have been guided by the usage of any one group of authorities, whether German, English, or American, but seems to have worked out his own definitions from the way terms are used by laymen, chiefly by the quacks who advertise to cure “stammering”. For instance he says, “It is easy enough to show that the difficulty of the stammerer is in some way connected with the production of the vowel, and that the consonant is not the obstacle,” while on the other hand, “In stuttering, the consonant is produced repeatedly.” Again, on page 209 he says, translating from H. Gutzman, “There are stammerers that never stumble in speech, but that stammer, nevertheless.” Believers in the new freedom for women will be more amused than shocked to hear Mr. Bluemel reiterating the old superstition, “Mentally, females vary little, and any extreme variation from the norm is seldom witnessed,” but they will hardly dispute his statement, ” Conversableness is, in general, greater in the female sex.”
Volume II is almost entirely taken up with a discussion of various quack systems of curing speech defects, grouping their elements under such headings as respiration, vocalization, articulation, modes of enunciation, and so on. The chapter on psychological methods is perhaps the most valuable in the whole work. Pages 235 to 254, which deal with psychoanalysis as practiced by Freud, are particularly well written. Reserving this chapter, together with some useful exercises in vocalization and articulation, then what remains of volume II could be dismissed in the summary statement?nearly all schools for stammerers are fraudulent. Forty-five pages are filled with a glossary, which along with some useful information includes much that is trivial if not misleading. It is not easy to understand why these words need to be defined in such a glossary?culminate, cursory, cutaneous, data, definition, degenerate, destitute, detriment, dexterity, dollar, dyspepsia, and ecstasy?to mention only a few. True, the author has remarked in his preface, that the glossary “has been made sufficiently comprehensive to render the book available to the youthful stammerer,” but that youth is surely to be pitied, whether he stammer or speak fluently, who relies upon the definitions, “Ipecacuanha: a drug; a medicine,” and again, “Bromide of potassium: a drug; a medicine,” and assumes that a dose of one is equivalent to a dose of the other. A. T.
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