Memoir on the radical cure of stuttering, by a surgical operation / by J.F. Dieffenbach ; translated from the German, by Joseph Travers.

  • Dieffenbach, Johann Friedrich, 1792-1847.
Date:
1841
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Memoir on the radical cure of stuttering, by a surgical operation / by J.F. Dieffenbach ; translated from the German, by Joseph Travers. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    thus again and again renewed. The peculiar physical horror which constitutes a stutterer, and which is excited by the effort to speak, is very similar to that which gives rise to the excitement and spasm of the hydrophobic patient at the sight of water. This internal movement might, on that account, be called phonophobia. The boy's mother caught eagerly at my offer to make an effort to cure him ; accordingly, with the assistance of Drs. Holthoff and Hildebrandt, the ope- ration was performed as follows : — The boy sat with his head leaned against the breast of an assistant; the tongue being protruded as far as possible, was grasped on its anterior half with the forceps of MiizeuXj being thus compressed laterally, and drawn forwards by one assistant. The gentleman against whose breast the boy's head rested, retracted the angles of the mouth with a pair of blunt hooks. Grasping now the tongue as near to its root as possi- ble, betw^een the thumb and forefinger of the left hand, I passed the bistoury through it, and divided it completely from below upwards; a strong ligature passed through the posterior edge of the w^ound, served to fix it temporarily, and prevent too great a strain upon the slender band which alone connected the mass of the tongue to it; the anterior lip of the incision was now .grasped, and laterally compressed between the modified hare-lip forceps, and a wedge- shaped slice excised out of the whole thickness of the tongue. It will be found more convenient to make