A Quite Interesting Fact!
I'm reading The Past is a Foreign Country by David Lowenthal in preparation for uni and have just learnt that the original concept in the seventeenth century of a nostalgic affliction wasn't a yearning for the a rose-tinted past, but an actual physical complaint - basically homesickness. If you lived away from your homeland for too long, people thought that you could literally die (actually it was more likely to be meningitis or TB or similar but, hey, I've had bad homesickness before. It's rough). The first victims were Swiss mercenaries, who only had to hear a familiar goatherder's tune to be affected so badly that Swiss soldiers were forbidden to play, sing, whistle, and possibly even think about alpine ditties. I know it's a lazy stereotype, but I can't be the only one thinking of The Sound of Music, right? XD
Sadly, cures were less amusing. On the whole, going back home was seen as the only cure, but others had more enterprising ideas... I quote: "... soldiers incapacitated by nostalgia were buried alive, and after two or three burials the outbreak of homesickness subsided."
Yeah, I imagine being threatened with repeated burial would probably cure you of most things. EXCEPT A FEAR OF BEING BURIED ALIVE, HOLEY MOLEY.
Okay, wow, as late as 1946 scientists still believed that nostalgia was considered a psycho-physiological malady, with university healh centres treating it along with flu and hepatitis because of its prevalence amongst students! As if swine flu wasn't enough to worry about....
Sadly, cures were less amusing. On the whole, going back home was seen as the only cure, but others had more enterprising ideas... I quote: "... soldiers incapacitated by nostalgia were buried alive, and after two or three burials the outbreak of homesickness subsided."
Yeah, I imagine being threatened with repeated burial would probably cure you of most things. EXCEPT A FEAR OF BEING BURIED ALIVE, HOLEY MOLEY.
Okay, wow, as late as 1946 scientists still believed that nostalgia was considered a psycho-physiological malady, with university healh centres treating it along with flu and hepatitis because of its prevalence amongst students! As if swine flu wasn't enough to worry about....