THE PREVENTION AND CURE OF STUTTERING. 739
twenty-five cases), sixty per cent. of the words are nouns and twenty per
cent. are verbs. But in the vocabulary of the ordinary adult, sixty per cent.
of the words are nouns, while only eleven per cent. are verbs. In other
words, the child of two years has made nearly twice as much progress,
relatively, in the acquisition of those words that are associated with move-
ments (verbs), as he has with the acquisition of those words that are merely
aames of objects.
The same is true, even to a more striking extent, when we compare the
acquisition of adverbs with that of verbs. The average child makes nearly
four times as rapid relative progress with the adverbs as with the verbs. It
is interesting in this connection to remember that Max Miller says that
she primitive Sanskrit roots of all our Indo-Germanic words originally
ndicated actions, and not objects.
The principle itself is one that is revolutionizing modern pedagogic
methods. Its germ may be found as far back as Aristotle, whose whole
sthical system is based upon the formation of good habits by constant
staining of the activities, and who has said that even as we learn to play on
che harp by playing on the harp, so we become virtuous by doing actions
of virtue, and just and brave bv doing actions of bravery and justice.
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APPLICATION OF THE LAWS OF PHYSICAL TRAINING
FOR THE PREVENTION AND CURE OF STUTTERING.
BY EDWARD MUSSEY HARTWELL, PH.D., M.D., DIRECTOR OF PHYSICAL
TRAINING IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS OF BOSTON.
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My main contention is that physical training should be adequately
supported and effectively organized as a co-ordinate department in our
slementary and secondary schools ; not simply or chiefly because of its
value in promoting the health of the school population, but for the per-
haps weightier reason, that as an educational discipline it lies at the basis
of the most usual procedures employed by teachers to secure the ends of
mental and moral training. In attempting to show the value and impor-
ance of physical training as a necessary and irreducible factor in intel-
lectual training, I shall confine my remarks in the main to a single
oranch of the obviously fundamental department of language training, viz.,
shat of the education of the organs concerned in the production of speech.
Stuttering, as is well known, is most frequent among children and
youth of school age; and certain of the most authoritative writers on
the subject, as, for instance, Kussmaul, the Gutzmanns, and A. Melville
Bell, characterize it as a school disorder. <The schools,” says Bell,
“are the nurseries of stuttering.” I shall have occasion further on to
speak of the evidence which supports this view, and also of our reasons
for believing that very much of the stuttering which infects our schools