Lucius stuttered as a boy. What did you think of his parents' attempted cures? Do we invoke similarly unproven remedies today for this or other conditions?

Lucius stuttered as a boy. What did you think of his parents' attempted cures? Do we invoke similarly unproven remedies today for this or other conditions?

Like all cures of the past, it was a trial and error attempt to fix a problem. We can easily look back and say how cruel or uneducated or unethical these cures were, but if it wasn't for these past attempts today's cures may not have happened. We all learn from taking a chance on something that may help.

The attempted cures were truly a farce. The phrase "practicing medicine" often means just that - a doctor is learning as he or she goes. Sadly, the cures today seem to be unnecessary medications. I have seen many, many young boys whose parents practically demanded that their sons be labeled as ADD when the boys simply had energy that needed to be used doing some kind of physical activity.

Medicine is not just a science, it is an art and sometimes there is an aspect of trial and error which leads to further knowledge. They did the best they knew how to do at the time.

His parents thought they were doing the right thing by trying the methods of the time. I think they had good intentions, although there was also the fact that if he stuttered, he might not measure up in their eyes or the eyes of the world. If you on the Internet, or watch any TV infomercials, you will be inundated with "miracle cures." If one is desperate, they grasp at straws and anything that will give them hope.

As mentioned above, Lucius' parents did what was recommended at the time. These days, someone who stutters would likely receive speech therapy, but a therapy like that probably wasn't even available (invented?) at that time. What Lucius had to undergo certainly was cruel but I believe his parents tried to do whatever they could to "cure" him. They were willing to put Lucius through that agony of having to use that device because they wanted him cured. He was a reflection of them and being a stutterer was not acceptable. Today, when traditional medicinal methods don't work for whatever we are trying to remedy, we are often tempted to try anything. Treatments are all experimental at the time they are introduced. It is only through time and many trials that we realize what works and what doesn't.

What do we do in medicine today that people of the future will look back and say, "How idiotic" or "cruel" etc. I also laughed over "everyone knows it's oatmeal to cure pneumonia!" (not the exact quotation but I can't quickly find it. As I had pneumonia last winter I thought, "Oh, that's what I should have eaten to get over it more quickly!"