According to Sydenham,[19] the disorders which are termed “hysterical in women and hypochondriac in men arise from irregular motions of the animal spirits, whence they are hurried with violence and too copiously to a particular part, occasioning convulsions and pain when they exert {210} their force upon parts of delicate sensation, and destroying the functions of the respective organs which they enter into, and of those also whence they came; both being highly injured by this unequal distribution, which quite perverts the economy of nature.” Speaking of the strangulation of the womb, or fits of the mother, he says: “In this case the spirits, being copiously collected in the lower belly and rushing with violence to the fauces, occasion convulsions in all the parts through which they pass, puffing up the belly like a ball.” [Footnote 19: _The Entire Works of Dr. Thomas Sydenham, newly made English from the Originals, etc._, by John Swan, M.D., London, 1763, pp. 416, 417.] After a time, the idea that the uterus was the exclusive seat of hysteria was in large measure supplanted by the view that the sexual organs in general were concerned in the production of hysterical phenomena. Romberg defined hysteria as a “reflex neurosis caused by genital irritation.” Woodbury[20] concludes as late as 1876 that only where the pathological source of hysterical symptoms resides in the uterus or ovaries, cases may, with some show of propriety, be termed hysterical; and where the uterus and organs associated with it in function are not in a morbid condition no symptoms can be correctly called hysterical. [Footnote 20: _Medical and Surgical Reporter_, December 2, 1876.] Bridges,[21] another American writer, in a paper on the pathology of hysteria, says that hysteria does not occur most frequently in women with diseased wombs, but in those whose sexual systems, by pampering and other processes, are abnormally developed and sensitive. He makes the same point with reference to the male sex. Sometimes, however, besides the emotional state in the male, there is actual disease of the sexual organs, caused by abuse or over-indulgence. Uterine disease and hysteria are sometimes like results of one cause, and not respectively cause and effect: women are hysterical oftener than men because the uterine function in woman's physiology plays a more important part in the production of emotional diseases than any organ of the male sex. [Footnote 21: _Chicago Medical Examiner_, 1872, xiii. 193-199.] The truth would seem simply to be, that, as the uterus and ovaries are the most important female organs, they are therefore a frequent source of reflex irritation in hysterical patients.