To the stammerer or stutterer or the parents of a stammering
child, experience brings no truer lesson than this: Stammering
cannot be outgrown; danger lurks behind delay.





CHAPTER VII

THE EFFECT ON THE MIND


It is hardly necessary to describe to the stammerer who has passed
beyond the first stage of his trouble the effect of stammering on
the mind. Most any sufferer in the second or third stages of the
malady has experienced for very brief periods the sensation of
thoughts slipping away from him and of pursuing or attempting to
pursue those thoughts for some seconds without success, finally to
find them returning like a flash.

The stammerer who recalls such an incident will remember the
feelings of lassitude or momentary physical exhaustion, as well as
the feeling of weakness which followed the lapse-of-thought. This
mental flurry is but an indication of a mental condition known as
Thought-Lapse, which may result from long-continued stammering,
especially a case which has been allowed to progress into the
Chronic or Advanced Stage.

A CASE OF APHASIA: One writer, in citing instances of thought-