Nostalgia

Nostalgia describes a longing for the past, often in idealized form. Nostalgia may or may not also be known as homesickness.

History as a medical term
The term was newly coined in 1688 by Johannes Hofer (1669-1752), a Swiss medical student. The word is made up of two Greek roots ( = nostos = returning home, and  = algos = pain/longing), to refer to "the pain a sick person feels because he wishes to return to his native land, and fears never to see it again". This neologism was so successful that people forgot its origin. Homesickness is often given as a synonym for nostalgia.

During this period, from the late seventeenth century to the late nineteenth century, that doctors diagnosed and treated nostalgia, it also had other names in various languages &mdash; mal du pays (country sickness) in French, Heimweh (home-pain) in German, hiraeth in Welsh, and el mal de corazón (heart-pain) in Spanish.

Cases resulting in death were known and soldiers were sometimes successfully treated by being discharged and sent home. Receiving a diagnosis was, however, generally regarded as an insult. In 1787 Robert Hamilton (1749-1830) described a case of a soldier suffering from nostalgia, who received sensitive and successful treatment:


 * "In the year 1781, while I lay in barracks at Tin mouth in the north of England, a recruit who had lately joined the regiment,...was returned in sick list, with a message from his captain, requesting I would take him into the hospital. He had only been a few months a soldier; was young, handsome, and well-made for the service; but a melancholy hung over his countenance, and wanness preyed on his cheeks. He complained of a universal weakness, but no fixed pain; a noise in his ears, and giddiness of his head....As there were little obvious symptoms of fever, I did not well know what to make of the case...Some weeks passed with little alteration...excepting that he was evidently become more meager. He scarcely took any nourishment...became indolent...He was put on a course of strengthening medicines; wine was allowed him. All proved ineffectual... He had now been in the hospital three months, and was quite emaciated, and like one in the last stage of consumption... On making my morning visit, and inquiring, as usual, of his rest at the nurse, she happened to mention the strong notions he had got in his head, she said, of home, and of his friends. What he was able to speak was constantly on this topic. This I had never heard of before...He had talked in the same style, it seems, less or more, ever since he came into the hospital. I went immediately up to him, and introduced the subject; and from the alacrity with which he resumed it.. I found it a theme which much affected him. He asked me, with earnestness, if I would let him go home. I pointed out to him how unfit he was, from his weakness to undertake such a journey [he was a Welchman] till once he was better; but promised him, assuredly, without farther hesitation, that as soon as he was able he should have six weeks to go home. He revived at the very thought of it... His apeitite soon mended; and I saw in less than a week, evident signs of recovery."

Cases of nostalgia, which sometimes occurred as epidemics, were less frequent when the armies were victorious and more frequent when they suffered reverses.

By the 1850s nostalgia was losing its status as a particular disease and coming to be seen rather as a symptom or stage of a pathological process. It was considered as a form of melancholia and a predisposing condition among suicides. Nostalgia was, however, still diagnosed among soldiers as late as the American Civil War.

By the 1870s interest in nostalgia as a medical category had all but vanished. Most saw the decline of this serious disease as a good thing, the result of progress. Nonetheless some lamented what they saw as the loss of the feelings for home that gave rise to the illness. Of course the phenomenon of nostalgia did not disappear with its demedicalization.

External links and references
edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


 * Boym, Svetlana, The Future of Nostalgia (NY: Basic Books, 2001)
 * Boulbry, Gaëlle and Borges, Adilson. Évaluation d’une échelle anglo-saxonne de mesure du tempérament nostalgique dans un contexte culturel français (Evaluation of an anglo-saxon scale of measurement of nostalgic mood in a French cultural context)
 * Simon Bunke: Heimweh. In: Bettina von Jagow / Florian Steger (Eds.): Literatur und Medizin im europäischen Kontext. Ein Lexikon. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 2005. Sp. 380-384.
 * Coromines i Vigneaux, Joan. Diccionari etimològic i complementari de la llengua catalana [Barcelona, Curial Edicions Catalanes, 1983]
 * Davis, Fred Yearning for Yesterday: a Sociology of Nostalgia. New York: Free Press, 1979.
 * Hofer, Johannes, "Medical Dissertation on Nostalgia." Bulletin of The Institute of the History of Medicine. Trans. Carolyn Kiser Anspach 2.6 ((1688) Aug. 1934): 376-91.
 * Hunter, Richard and Macalpine, Ida. Three Hundred Years of Psychiatry:1535-1860, [Hartsdale, NY, Carlisle Publishing, Inc, 1982]
 * Hutcheon, Linda "Irony, Nostalgia, and the Postmodern"
 * Jameson, Fredric "Nostalgia for the Present." The South Atlantic Quarterly, 88.2 (1989): 527. 60.
 * Goodman's http://www.lclark.edu/~jgoodman/webpage%20ULTIMATE/Index.htm
 * Thurber, Christopher A. and Marian D. Sigman, "Preliminary Models of Risk and Protective Factors for Childhood Homesickness: Review and Empirical Synthesis." Child Development 69:4 (Aug. 1998): 903-34.
 * Dylan Trigg, The Aesthetics of Decay: Nothingness, Nostalgia, and the Absence of Reason (New York: Peter Lang, 2006)
 * Svetlana Boym, The Future of Nostalgia (New York: Basic Books, 2002)
 * Nostalgia cartoons from 70's and 80's (in Polish).
 * Linda M. Austin, 'Emily Bronte's Homesickness', Victorian Studies, 44:4 (summer 2002): 573-596.
 * "The Memory of McGuffey" - Nostalgia for the McGuffey Readers
 * Simon Bunke: Heimwehforschung.de
 * Early Xer: Things that early Gen Xers grew up with