The plea of humanity and common sense, against two publications : one written by "a physician" incognito, advertised "The stammerer's hand-book," but entitled "A treatise on the nature and causes of stammering;" and the other by Mr. Yearsley, entitled, "Stammering, and other imperfections of speech, treated by surgical operations on the throat" / by James Wright.

Date:: 1843

Credit: The plea of humanity and common sense, against two publications : one written by "a physician" incognito, advertised "The stammerer's hand-book," but entitled "A treatise on the nature and causes of stammering;" and the other by Mr. Yearsley, entitled, "Stammering, and other imperfections of speech, treated by surgical operations on the throat" / by James Wright. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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the sound of a, a, a, a, can be continued without interruption, till the breath is exhausted.” The author of the “ Treatise,” &c. will excuse the following very important emendation. The lips are not palpably the parts at fault. It is the velum pendulum palati which is in error. “ There is also occasionally seen another kind of stammer- ing,” continues the theorist, “ in which the difficulty consists in the pronunciation of labial letters; but here, unlike the former case, the lips can be closed as in forming ‘ m ’ or ‘ b, ’ and no sound is produced, because there is a temporary im- possibility to part the lips; still during the efforts the breath issues forcibly from the nostrils. In the first, the individual struggles with the mouth wide open, and a continuous vowel issuing from the larynx, but there exists at the time an im- possibility of combining it with various other sounds. In the second, the mouth is closed ; but as a full stream of breath passes from the nostrils, the larynx must be open as in the former case. In neither of these instances, could the larynx by any possibility have been closed; so that these facts are directly opposed to the supposition that closure of the larynx is the essential cause of stuttering.” A little grammatical or elocutionary, as well as a little more physiological, training, would have enabled the writer to com- prehend the points in question; viz. the causes with respect to sound, and to the impossibility of parting the lips. In the first place, though “ m” and “ b” are labial letters, one of them is a nasal liquid, the other a middle mute, so that in the case instanced, the reason why sound is not produced, though the breath issues forcibly through the nostrils, is because the ligaments of the glottis, the vocal chords, are quiescent; and the reason why the lips refuse to separate for “ b” is be- cause the breath does issue through the nostrils. For the utterance of this letter, the velum should furl up to prevent an escape of vocalized breath in that direction, and subse- quently to the murmur above the larynx, peculiar to the middle mute letters, the pharynx should contract; and the reason why the lips are apparently unmanageable, and cannot separate for “ m,” is because there is an untimely contraction of the pharynx3.

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