Greeks and Romans
While Moses is known as the first stutterer from references in the Bible, the Greek orator Demosthenes (382-322 BC) is the first documented stutterer in historical terms. According to Bobrick, Demosthenes subjected himself to a rigorous and exhausting physical regimen in an attempt to cure his speech problem. His self-appointed treatment included strapping lead weights to his chest, then running up steep inclines to build up his lung capacity. He then spent hours practicing to speak with a mouth full of pebbles.
Attempts to pinpoint the cause of stuttering began by analyzing the anatomy of speech. Aristotle provided the theory that would dominate thinking for centuries. In his treatise, "On the History of Animals," Aristotle proposed that the tongue was the organ of speech.
"Aristotle's treatise was among the earliest theories about it and was the view that was sustained through the Middle Ages into the Renaissance and down really into the 19th century," says Bobrick. "His theory that somehow or other the tongue was the organ of speech was fundamental in the history of therapy. Of course there is no single organ of speech. Speech is a function of the entire organism, of the entire body, because it involves breathing and the vocal folds and it involves the muscles in the neck and the jaw, the lips, the tongue, and so on."
This improper focus on the tongue led to numerous erroneous treatments that subjected the stutterer's tongue to all sorts of medical attention. Galen, a Greek physician living under Roman rule, advanced the understanding of the anatomy of speech by identifying how the larynx worked to form sounds. However, he too, tied the cause of stuttering to an abnormality of the tongue and instructed patients to wrap their tongues in moist towels to prevent the dryness he believed caused the affliction.
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