sure to hear one or more dramatic recitals of the falls and
injuries suffered by the junior members of the household, from the
first time that Johnny fell out of bed and frightened his mother nearly
to death, to the day that he was in an automobile crash at the age of
23. And these tales are always closed with the profound bit of confided
information that these falls are of no consequence--"nothing ever comes
of them."

While in a great measure this is true, there are many falls and
injuries suffered in childhood which are responsible for the ills of
later life, although it is seldom indeed that they are blamed for the
results which they bring about.

Injuries and falls are a frequent cause of stuttering and stammering.
Usually, however, an injury results in stuttering or stammering, not
because of any change in the physical structure brought about by the
injury but rather by the nervous shock attending it. In other words,
cases of stammering and stuttering caused apparently by injury might,
if desired, be traced still further back, showing as the initial cause
an injury but as a direct cause the fright or nervous shock resulting
from that injury.

A good example of this is found in a case of a young man who came to me
some years ago. He said: "When I was about five years old, my brother
and I were playing in the cellar and I wanted to jump off the top step.
When I jumped, I hit my head on the cross-piece and it knocked me back
on the steps and I slid down on my back, and ever since, for ten years,
I have stammered."

Here is a case where the blow on the head, or the succession of blows
on the spinal column as the boy slid down the stairs, might have been
the cause of the trouble. More probably, it was the combined injury,
undoubtedly resulting in a severe nervous shock from which the boy
probably did not recover for many days.

Another man said, in describing his case during an examination: "At the
age of 16, I was hit on the head with a ball. I lost my memory for one
week and when I regained it, I was a stammerer." This is a plain case
of injury resulting in immediate stammering.

Still another case is that of a boy who, at the age of three, was shot
in the neck by a rifle, the bullet coming out of his chin, which
resulted in his becoming an immediate stammerer. Here, as in the case
of the boy who swallowed the nail, it might be expected that the cause
was a defect in the organs of speech, but I found stammerin