The origination of a local nervous disease by a primary disease of the genital organs is dependent upon a simple mechanical process, which is explained by _Windscheid_ in the following terms: “In this connection, the two principal mechanical factors are pressure and traction. Pressure may affect individual nerves or an entire nerve plexus, and may be exercised by a tumour, an exudation or a misplaced organ (_Hegar_); further causes of pressure are furnished by inflammatory nodules, by connective tissue hyperplasias, and, according to _Freund_, by contractile processes in the organs themselves and in the ligaments. Traction on the nerves results from displacements, as from prolapse of the uterus or the ovaries, and, according to _Hegar_, from traction on the pedicle of small tumours. A combination of pressure and traction occurs especially in affections of the abdominal attachments of the uterus, also where there is scarring of the neck of the uterus and of the vaginal fornices. Great importance, also, in relation to the production of local nervous disorders, must be attributed to the laying bare of nerve-terminals by catarrhal and other inflammatory processes. Abnormal mobility of the genital organs as a partial manifestation of enteroptosis must also be mentioned as a cause of mechanical stimulation of the nerves. Finally, in this connection, must be considered the paresis of the abdominal walls that follows frequent and severe confinements.” The symptoms of the local nervous disorders to which these mechanical stimuli may give rise, are very various, but may, according to _Hegar_, be comprised under the general designation of _lumbar enlargement symptoms_ (_Lendenmarksymptome_), inasmuch as the local stimulation of the intrapelvic nerves, affects the nerve-centres of the lumbar enlargement of the spinal cord. Among the symptoms, severe pains are prominent, either continuous or intermittent, within the pelvis and in the sacral region, accompanied by a sense of weight and pressure in the abdomen, or by dragging pain in the region of the hips, in the gluteal region, in the outer and back parts of the thighs, in the inner surface of the leg, in the calf, in the dorsum of the foot, the sole of the foot, and the heel; or by coccydynia (pain over the coccyx and the lower extremity of the sacrum), or hyperæsthesia and anæsthesia of the external genitals in the region of the vaginal orifice, or, finally, by disorder of the processes of micturition and defæcation. In some of these cases, the weakness of the lower extremities is so severe that a paralytic condition is simulated. Actual paralysis may however occur, in consequence of the extension of peritoneal inflammation to the nerve-plexuses of the pelvis, leading to the occurrence of neuritis.