lapse, or aphasia, tells of the case of a man unable to recall the
name of any object until it was repeated for him. A knife, for
instance, placed on the table before him, brought no mental image
of the word representing the object, yet if the word "knife" were
spoken for him, he would immediately say, "Oh, yes, it is a
knife."

A chapter could be filled with instances of this sort, but I shall
not attempt to quote further any of the symptoms of aphasia in a
stammerer, for in cases that become so far advanced, there is
considerable question as to the possibility of bringing about a
cure. I say this, notwithstanding the fact that my experience with
students having this tendency has been very satisfactory indeed.

Cases of unreasoning despondency, which result in the stammerer's
desire to take his own life, are so numerous as hardly to require
comment. Very frequently you see in some of the large metropolitan
papers an account of a suicide resulting from a nervous and mental
condition brought on by stuttering and stammering. This condition
seems to be very marked in the cases of stammerers between the
ages of twelve and twenty, records showing that most of the
suicides of stammerers are persons between those ages.

The intense mental strain, the extreme nervous condition, the
continual worry and fear cannot fail, sooner or later, to have its
effect upon the mind. This is clear to any stammerer, who is
familiar with the mental condition brought about by the first few
hours of one of his periods of recurrence. Another case where the
mental strain is extremely great is that of the synonym stammerer
--the mentally alert individual who, in order to prevent the