AS the WIDOW has in her former Days, tasted both of the _Sweets_ and the _Sours_ of the MAIDEN, as well as of the _marry’d State_; so she is now also subject to all the _Affections_ of the _One_, as well as to some of the _Other_. Whatever she may judge of her self, and however she may, in some measure, be liberated from the _Solicitudes_ of the FIRST, and freed from the _Anxieties_ of the _other_; yet she is still so far from being exempted from the _Morbifick Consequences_ of the Natural Imbecillity of her tender SEX; that she now, tho’ in different _Respects_ and various _Cases_, participates of the _Indispositions_ of BOTH. HOWEVER yet, notwithstanding this Variety of _Afflictions_, to which the WIDOW is actually expos’d; I confess, that, I know not so much as _one Disease_ or _Symptom_, which is singularly peculiar to _Her self_, that is, but what either the MAIDEN or the WIFE may be lyable to, as well as the WIDOW: Tho’, in the mean time, I must also acknowledge, that, _Those_ which I am now about to touch upon, may however, be justly esteem’d to be more familiar to _Her_, than to either of _These_, as will by and by more evidently appear. UPON which Consideration, I hope the following _Heads_ may here pertinently take place; not but that the _others_, I mean the MAID and the WIFE, may also sometimes, and perhaps frequently too, find their _Case_ included in the THEME of this _Section_, as well as the WIDOW Her self, according to the _Diversity_ of their Circumstances. FOR these _Reasons_, I shall begin with _That_, from which none of the _Three_, that is, neither the MAID, nor the WIFE, nor the WIDOW, can altogether plead Exemption, which notwithstanding, according to my best Judgment, is more immediately the particular _Root_ and _Source_ of the most, if not of all, the WIDOW’s _Distempers_, which however, that I may not too much over-run my Design of _Brevity_, I shall briefly comprehend under _One_ or _Two Heads_, viz.—— [Illustration] [Illustration] CHAP. II. _Of the_ HYSTERICK PASSION. WELL might the excellent _Democritus_ write to his _Scholar_, the far more excelling _Hippocrates_, that the WOMB is the _Source of Six Hundred Griefs_, and the _Spring of innumerable Sorrows to the_ WOMAN: Because of the manifest _Sympathy_ or _Affinity_, which the WOMB has with almost all the other _Parts_ of the Body. And as we may reasonably conclude from such an _Affinity_, that these _Symptoms_ must needs be both _Numerous_ and _Different_ in Kind; so I think, for the same Reason, they may be _All_ pertinently comprehended under the _General Title_ of _Hysterick Maladies_.