ABSTRACT
It may, perhaps, be necessary before relating cases which I have treated, suffering from hysteria, to state briefly what I understand by this term. The word Hysteria was doubtless originally used in the belief that it depended on excessive reflex action of the nerves of the uterus and ovaries, when these organs were excited by disease or other causes; but this view is a very limited one, for, as Dr Handfield Jones says, ‘it does not appear that females suffering with irritable uterus are more hysterical, often not so much so, as those who have no such disorder’. There is, however, as I have already mentioned, in almost all hysterical patients, an exacerbation at the menstrual periods.
