parts to fail properly to function? The first and most obvious
conclusion would be that there was some inherent defect in the
organ, muscle or part which failed to function. But experience has
proved that this is usually not the case. An examination of two
thousand cases of defective utterance, including many others
besides stuttering and stammering, revealed three-tenths of one
per cent. with an organic defect--that is, a defect in the organs
themselves. In other words, only three persons out of every
thousand afflicted with defective utterance were found to have any
physical shortcoming that was responsible for the affliction.

Take any of these two thousand cases--say those that stammered,
for instance. What was the cause of their difficulty, if it did
not lie in the organs used in the production of speech? This is
the question that long puzzled investigators in the field of
speech defects. Like Darwin, they said: "It must be this, for if
it is not this, then what is it?" If stuttering and stammering are
not caused by actual physical defects in the organs themselves,
what then can be the cause?

DUE TO A LACK OF CO-ORDINATION: Cases of stammering and stuttering
where no organic defect is present are due to a lack of co-
ordination between the brain and the muscles of speech. In other
words, the harmony between the brain and the speech organs which
normally result in smooth working and perfect speech has been
interrupted. The brain impulses are no longer properly transmitted
to and executed by the muscles of speech.

This failure to transmit properly brain messages or this lack of
co-ordination may take one of two forms: it may result in an