tuttering. He made his plans to place himself under my care but
before getting back, fell a victim to his inordinate appetite for drink
and was laid up for a week. His wife wrote me the circumstances, told
me it had been going on for nine years and that all efforts to
eradicate the appetite had failed. I immediately advised her that I
considered his case incurable and could not accept him for treatment.
In such cases, a cure is built upon too shallow and uncertain a
foundation to offer any hope of being permanent.

BELOW NORMAL INTELLIGENCE: There is another incurable case which must
be included if we are to complete this list of the incurable forms of
speech impediments. That is the case of the stammerer who is of below
normal intelligence. These cases are very rare and I do not recall but
four instances where a case has been diagnosed as incurable on account
of the lack of intelligence. This is a direct refutation of the
statement that stammerers are naturally below normal in mental ability.
Out of more than twenty-six years' experience in meeting stammerers by
the thousands, I can say most emphatically that stammerers as a class
ARE NOT NATURALLY BELOW NORMAL INTELLIGENCE OR MENTAL POWER, SAVE AS
THEIR TROUBLE MAY HAVE AFFECTED THEIR CONCENTRATION OR WILL-POWER.

THE LACKADAISICAL: The last and largest class of incurable cases of
stammering are those who will not make the effort to be cured. These
are the spineless, the unsure, the cowards, who are afraid to try
anything for fear it will not be successful.

They are usually afflicted with a malady worse than stammering or
stuttering--"indecision"--a malady for which science has found no
remedy. Knowing the dire results of continued stammering, still they
stammer. Reason fails to move them to the necessary effort. Common
sense makes no appeal. Well, indeed, in such cases, may we paraphrase
the words of Dr. Russell H. Conwell and say:

"There is nothing in the world that can prevent you from being cured of
stammering but YOURSELF. Neither heredity, environment or any of the
obstacles superimposed by man can keep you from marching straight
through to a cure if you are guided by a firm, driving determination
and have health and normal intelligence."

These seven classes of incurable cases complete the list. And the
number of such cases, all taken together, is so small as to be almost
out of consideration. For, out of a thousand cases of stuttering and
stammering exa