PEDIATRICS Vol. 98 No. 3 September 1996, pp. 402
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In 1841 Prussian botanist and surgeon Johann Friedrich Dieffenbach tried to cure stuttering by grabbing a patient's tongue with toothed forceps, slicing a triangular wedge from its root and sewing it back together with thick silk—all without administering anesthetics. Dieffenbach had operated on several hundred stutterers before noticing that his procedure was ineffective. The good doctor's cure is memorialized in the common house plant Dieffenbachia (dumb-cane), which causes a painful inflammation of the mouth and throat when ingested.