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Good morning. You sure have had a lot of visits with me this past while. Is the NFL covering your co-pay or something? At any rate, time to look at your chart… you’re saying that you’ve been at a loss for words since football season ended? I suppose, in some ways, many of us have experienced the same. But perhaps it’s all that peanut butter you’ve been eating that’s been causing this? No? Well, I’m going to have you to open your mouth wide and say “ahh”, please.
![Stuttering Causes, Treatment, Definition & Types](https://images.medicinenet.com/images/article/main_image/stuttering-speech-disorder.jpg)
THE HEMIGLOSSECTOMY: A SURGICAL METHOD FOR THE ELOQUENT ORATOR?
What are the positives of this treatment?
It’s tough to be a stutterer. Since the dawn of human speech hundreds of thousands of years ago, impediments to clear communication have run rampant, causing all kinds of ill effects – but especially embarrassment to the stutterer. Still, against all odds, stutterers have still risen to the upper echelons of society – from England’s King George VI to esteemed actor James Earl Jones to US President Joe Biden, just to name a few. It is probably fair to say that it has become much more manageable to be a stutterer in the modern era, especially with advancements in speech therapy and other early intervention, non-surgical techniques.
It wasn’t always this way, of course. In 1840s Prussia, Dr. Johann Friedrich Dieffenbach was a highly regarded surgeon, best known for his pioneering research on blood transfusions, as well as many new discoveries in the field of craniomaxillofacial surgery. Dr. Dieffenbach was a continental leader in skin grafts and transplants, and even managed to surgically treat a boy with strabismus – i.e., a lazy eye – in the early 19th century – a remarkable feat.
And it definitely did stop the stuttering.
What are the negatives of this treatment?
As one might imagine, not only was the stuttering stopped… but so was much of regular speech as well. Many patients were left completely mute by this technique, as the surgery severed so many nerves in the tongue that it meant patients had essentially zero control of it afterwards. Not only was speech an impossibility for most, but even just keeping the tongue inside their own mouths was a real struggle.
Not only was the technique overly zealous, but we also have to remember that the procedure was, like so many others of its day, done completely without the use of any anesthetic. One can guess at how that went over among 19th-century patients.
What are are some real life examples of this treatment?
Around the same time as Dieffenbach’s work in Prussia, a French physician by the name of Chegoin tried a similar surgical technique; he believed that stuttering was caused by an unbalanced ratio of tongue to oral cavity. Only by reducing the size of the tongue would the stuttering be cured… it’s believed this method was similarly successful to the German method.
The traditional Prussian hemiglossectomy is no longer performed as a stuttering treatment thanks to advances in speech therapy and psychiatry, both of which have proven to have much more positive effects, especially when used jointly and when applied from a very young age with patients. That said, hemiglossectomies – and full glossectomies – are still occasionally used today, most predominantly for instances of extremely advanced oral cancer. Rather than a triangular incision at the base of the tongue, more modern procedures simply remove the cancerous areas of the tongue, which, for some, can unfortunately be quite large.
It is curious to some that surgery was considered, for a brief time, the go-to treatment method for this incredibly common problem – particularly when so many other interventions have existed throughout history.
Another 19th-century French surgeon named J.M.G. Itard used a golden or ivory fork, placed in the oral cavity, to support the base of the tongue and prevent stuttering… although more humane, it’s unclear as to whether it was any more effective.
An American doctor named Yates had an additional method for treating stuttering which became quite popular in Belgium and Prussia later in the 19th century, though, once again, the efficacy of said treatment is entirely unclear. He emphasized in his experiments that stutterers should speak every word with their tongue raised to the roof their mouth, and pushing every sound forward towards the front of their lips.
How can we improve this treatment for the future?
The use of surgery as a stuttering relief method was innovative, if ill-informed; I believe it’s a reasonable possibility that with a revision of the surgical process, one could potentially see improvements in the modern era. Consider the possibility of looking like the subject below:
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Information for this article taken from here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
“N-n-n-n-nice work!” – Bill O’Brien
I feel like I should remind everyone that Stuttering Bill O’Brien as a kharacter is a tribute to the Stuttering Bill character from Stephen King’s “It”, in case anyone was unaware of that.
I stuttered as a child, my speech therapist helped me by having me think through what I was going to say before speaking, especially about the wording. She also had me learn parts of Gilbert and Sullivan operas and have me recite them until I could do them really fast and without stuttering which I think helped a lot more as it gave me confidence.
Mel Tillis stuttering and getting laughed at, even if it was intentional on his part, always pissed me off as a kid. Fuck him.
I had speech problems after fracturing my skull at 19 (catching warmup without a helmet, because men are stupid). Same thing helped me – I had to really thing through certain words in my head (particularly “th” words, but other random ones). Once I thought each through, and repeated it several times – I had it, and it stayed.
Suffice to say I was pretty damned freaked out by my speech when I first regained consciousness.
Christ, imagining this surgery is even grosser than Daddy Vladdy being sucked off by Trump while Tulsi licks his butthole.
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rite????
Love the “did I stutter?” tag!