This book is a fairly interesting history of stuttering. Benson Bobrick takes a look at historical figures who have stuttered, a list which includes Charles Darwin, Winston Churchill, Marilyn Monroe, Moses, and the Greek speaker Demosthenes. Knotted Tongues is a look at how stuttering was perceived throughout history and how stuttering has been treated.
The part of this book that I found the most fascinating was the time it spent examining how stuttering was treated over time. What I didn t expect was how cringe-inducing this would be. There were some methods that involved the chewing of various substances, as well as other that involved speaking with a mouth full of pebbles. The cringe-worthy methods involved scalding the tongue, and burning around the throat and head (the reasons had to do with what these doctors thought about the causes of stuttering). As painful as these sound, the most brutal method of treatment was a surgery that cuts part of the tongue away. Mind you, this was done before anesthetics. There is a fairly graphic description of this surgery in the book.
Knotted Tongues is not a book about how to best treat stuttering, nor does it go into detail about the variety of modern (and much more humane) treatments available today. This is a history of stuttering. It is easily readable, and does not go into the level of technical detail that you would find in Starkweather s Stuttering . While someone who stutters may have more interest in this book, I think that anyone would find this interesting, if only to see the various methods of treatment and how stutterers have been viewed throughout history. Good book.
The part of this book that I found the most fascinating was the time it spent examining how stuttering was treated over time. What I didn t expect was how cringe-inducing this would be. There were some methods that involved the chewing of various substances, as well as other that involved speaking with a mouth full of pebbles. The cringe-worthy methods involved scalding the tongue, and burning around the throat and head (the reasons had to do with what these doctors thought about the causes of stuttering). As painful as these sound, the most brutal method of treatment was a surgery that cuts part of the tongue away. Mind you, this was done before anesthetics. There is a fairly graphic description of this surgery in the book.
Knotted Tongues is not a book about how to best treat stuttering, nor does it go into detail about the variety of modern (and much more humane) treatments available today. This is a history of stuttering. It is easily readable, and does not go into the level of technical detail that you would find in Starkweather s Stuttering . While someone who stutters may have more interest in this book, I think that anyone would find this interesting, if only to see the various methods of treatment and how stutterers have been viewed throughout history. Good book.