Children's Tics.—Some tics consist of some very curious habits. Occasionally children hear some obscene or vulgar expression and repeat it. The repetition of it produces such a look of shock to propriety on the part of some of the other little ones who happen to be present that they repeat it in the spirit of bravado and then continue to utter it until it becomes a habit that is hard for them to break. After all, the use of blasphemy later on in life is really a tic, a habit of uttering words no longer expressive of any particular feeling, as a rule, unless in exceptional circumstances but just the result of a tendency for the speech organs to repeat certain words. They tell a good story of the Rev. Sydney Smith who, wishing to break an acquaintance of the habit of indulging in expletives, interlarded his speech with "fire tongs and sugar tongs" every ten words or so and when his auditor protested that that added nothing to the significance of what he said the Rev. Sidney suggested that that was also true of various blasphemous expressions that his acquaintance was accustomed to use.
At the Salpêtrière they tell the story of a little boy who had the habit of saying the French word which the corporal in Victor Hugo's "Les Miserables" made use of when anyone told him that it was because Wellington was a greater general than Napoleon that the French Emperor was defeated at Waterloo. Nothing seemed to be able to break the boy of the habit of interjecting this word into conversations sometimes in which he had no part and sometimes toward which he was expected to take only a respectful and childlike attitude of silence. He was sent to the Salpêtrière. The ordinary remedies had failed entirely. One day he was allowed to go outside of the hospital, or rather stole out of the gate and played marbles with some street gamins in front of it. During the game he used the word in question and they proceeded to give him a good thrashing. It is Charcot who tells that this broke him effectually of the habit.
One of the childish customs that sometimes disturbs parents very much because it seems to be such an unaccountable lapse into barbarism, though it is really nothing more than a tic in the strict sense of the word, is the habit that some children acquire of removing portions of hardened material [{569}] from their nose and then putting it into their month. Refined parents are apt to be so seriously disturbed by this that they fear for the child's mentality. Really the habit is not nearly so rare as is usually thought by some grown-ups who have forgotten about their own and others' childhood. In country places the habit is very common. It is not alone the dull children who do it but some very bright ones. Indeed, the tendency to the habit is so common that one wonders whether there is not something in nature that tempts to it. Parents who are fearful lest their children may be seriously hurt in health by the awfully insanitary habit may be reassured that after all a certain amount of the drainage of the nose is normally carried off through the posterior nares to the stomach and that no danger to health seems ever to have resulted from the practice. As a rule, the habit can be broken rather easily by a little judicious care and insistence, though I know of cases where relapses occurred and the habit continued surreptitiously.
Motor Tics.—Motor tics frequently develop as a consequence of some injury to a nerve or some intense overuse of it. Winking habits follow an herpetic involvement of the superior branch of the fifth nerve. Bell's palsy is sometimes followed in the face by a tendency to twitching on the unaffected side that makes the patient quite uncomfortable. Herpes zoster is sometimes followed by a catching of the breath, probably due to a little spasm in the muscles supplied by the nerve thus affected. Some of the yawning tics have this origin. Any neuritis may in the course of its betterment be followed by this curious tendency to explosion along the nerve that has been affected, as if the pathological process had more seriously interfered with inhibition than with the actual function of the nerve. Examples of over-exertion followed by twitchings are not rare. A scrubwoman who has seen better days and now has to carry a heavy bucket and use her right hand much with the brush may develop a twitching of the right arm. A janitor's wife who sweeps much may have a tendency to twitchings of the fingers as a consequence of the unusual exertion of holding the broom. Twitchings in the limbs of men who work at a foot lathe or other machine requiring foot power are not unusual though they are more often seen in the leg on which the workman habitually stands than in the other one and it seems to be oftener a strain on muscles than actual over-exercise that precedes the development of these tics.
Heredity.—Heredity plays as large a role in tics as it does in stuttering and other functional nervous disturbances. Occasionally the direct inheritance of some habit will be found, though there is nearly always more than a suspicion that a trick of speech or of act, which constitutes the tic, was learned by imitation rather than transferred directly. Besides, it is a case of a similarly constituted nervous system reacting in the same way to a similar environment, rather than any definite tendency existing by heredity in the nervous system. It is surprising what close observers children are and how easily they learn to imitate any habitual action of father or mother or, for that matter, of nurses or those who are close to them.
Mental Treatment.—The most important element in the psychotherapy of tics is their prophylaxis. They run in families, not by any inevitable hereditary influence, but as a consequence partly of imitation and of corresponding tendencies resulting from certain weaknesses in the family. Wherever they are known to be likely to occur, parents should be warned of the [{570}] possibility and the first symptom of any motor habit should be considered the beginning of a tic. As we have said, they are likely to begin in muscles that have been overstrained for any reason, especially when patients are run down. They are often seen after herpes and certain facial neuralgias.
There is probably no tic, no matter how long or how serious, that can not be eradicated, or greatly modified, if the patient will take the trouble and if the treatment is conducted so as gradually to get rid of it. Peculiar movements cannot be done away with at once. They can be lessened in intensity and in frequency and then gradually the patient will be encouraged by their becoming less noticeable than before to make renewed efforts. The habit must be gradually undone and this will take as long as it did to form it originally. The exercise of contrary muscular movements carefully carried out, and of gentle repression with definite times of exercise during the day, gradually increasing the length of the intervals of repression, in the end proves successful. Only a determined struggle will effect a cure. It depends on the patient's will. Like a drug addiction, or a tendency to overeat, or a craving for alcohol, it must be gradually overcome and then care must be exercised to prevent relapses; for when the condition is somewhat better, to relax vigilance and give up effort will allow the old condition to reassert itself with startling rapidity. People suffering from severe tics will often give up. Without the patient's hearty co-operation cure is impossible. With good will its gradual diminution gives the patient a confidence in self and an uplift in character that is extremely valuable, not only for physical but for mental conditions.
CHAPTER IV
STUTTERING, ATAXIA IN TALKING, WALKING, WRITING, ETC.
The difficulty of speech called stuttering has usually been considered rather as an unfortunate lack of control over the organs of articulation, somewhat corresponding to muscular awkwardness of any other kind, than as a pathological condition deserving the physician's attention. If anything was done for it formally, the first effort of the parents or the teacher was to correct the supposed bad habits and this failing the affection was relegated to someone who claimed to produce wonderful results by some special method. Perhaps, even oftener, stuttering was considered one of those affections, fortunately decreasing in number, that the child may be expected to outgrow. Often there was noted an hereditary element which was supposed to indicate incurability.
Stuttering deserves special treatment in a work on psychotherapy because it illustrates very strikingly one phase at least of mental influence over bodily function. While in the study of the etiology of the disease much has been made of anatomical features, nerves and muscles and anatomical anomalies of the speech organs and the respiratory tract, the sufferers from stuttering are certainly quite up to the average both in the physiology and anatomy of these regions. They are of all ranks and conditions of life, of all sizes and build, and it is evident that the trouble is not physical, but mental. They [{571}] pay too much attention to their speech and to the co-ordination of the many muscles engaged in speech production and the consequence is that they impair their power to use these organs. Practically all the cures recommended contain some element which distracts the attention from the speech to something else and so permits the function of the speech organs to proceed undisturbed.