Nostalgia Was Once Considered a Medical Disease

While we now think of nostalgia as a warm, bittersweet emotion, it began its life as a grim medical diagnosis. The term was coined in 1688 by Swiss physician Johannes Hofer, who combined the Greek words *nostos* (homecoming) and *algos* (pain) to describe a debilitating condition he observed in Swiss mercenaries serving abroad. Far from their native mountain homes, these soldiers experienced intense and sometimes fatal homesickness. The condition was taken so seriously that it was considered a neurological disease, with some doctors theorizing it was caused by damage to the brain from the incessant clanging of cowbells in the Swiss Alps.

The symptoms of this "psychopathological disease" were both mental and physical, including persistent sadness, anxiety, insomnia, loss of appetite, and an irregular heartbeat. Early proposed treatments were often harsh, ranging from leeches and opium to the threat of being buried alive to shock the patient out of their stupor. However, the only truly effective cure was a discharge from military service and a ticket home.

Over the next two centuries, as the understanding of psychology and psychosomatic illness evolved, nostalgia was gradually stripped of its status as a distinct disease. By the early 20th century, its definition had shifted away from a specific, place-based longing to the more abstract and generalized yearning for the past that we are familiar with today. The once-lethal "pain for home" had been reclassified as a normal, and often pleasant, part of the human emotional experience.