View report page

62
At the end of 1935, the ear clinic was left with 8 children
still suffering from otorrhoea.
3 of these were cases of intermittent otorrhoea and 3 were
recent cases. 1 was a child who had been treated at the clinic, his
parents had then left Acton and had later returned when the child
was found to have very profuse double ear discharge. His routine
treatment at the clinic is again having its effect and he is clearing
up, but this case makes one realise how totally inadequate the home
treatment of such cases is, and how very valuable and necessary
is the regular supervision that our Nurses exercise on these cases.
One child's parents refused treatment at the clinic as they objected
to his lessons being missed, and are having the child treated out
of school hours by their own doctor.
STAMMERING AND SPEECH DEFECTS.
Stammering is generally classified as a Speech Defect, although
in reality this is a misnomer. The stammerer has nothing
organically wrong with his vocal apparatus, neither has he any
defect of the speech itself. This may be proved by the fact that he
can sing or speak in chorus perfectly and can speak quite well if
he is in a room by himself. The stammer is due to muscular tension
and inability to co-ordinate the vocal and mental apparatus
caused by psychological inhibition.
The stammerer will usually tell you of some shock, illness
or accident which happened to him when he was four or five, which
be explains was the cause of the stammer. This may or may not
be true, but the fact is that there is a predisposition to stammer
which usually comes out at about that age. The child goes to
school and meets new companions, discipline is forced upon him
probably for the first time and he is suddenly plunged into a new
atmosphere which is completely alien to him, and he begins to
stammer.
A shy, self-conscious child will stammer first from fear'
a more precocious child will stammer out of self-defence. In the
first case the child will be afraid of stammering a second time and
the fear will make him do it again. In the second case the child
will find it pays, people will sympathise and give in to him rather
than hear his stammer. In both cases it grows into a habit which soon
becomes difficult to eradicate.
There have been stammerers from time immemorial and there
have always been people ready to cure them. Everyone knows