Regionalism, Urbanization, and Nationalism
By the beginning of the eighteenth century, nostalgia was widely considered to be a medical diagnosis and included in the extensive nosological schemes of the period. Fondness for one’s hometown was acknowledged as harmless, but a destructive variant of the emotion of longing was believed to engulf patients and their mind. Furthermore, experts recognized the disease’s prevalence in specific regional groups and perceived those who could not easily transition to urban life or readily embody nationalistic pursuits to be more susceptible to nostalgia’s woes. Medical experts emphasized the unique susceptibility of the Swiss to this condition. The illness was sometimes even referred to as die Schweizerkrankheit – the Swiss disease. This association was not surprising: for centuries, young Swiss men served as mercenary soldiers to various European rulers. The Swiss were far more likely to find themselves far from home, facing stressful circumstances in unfamiliar surroundings, than were the inhabitants of other nations. Charles Darwin’s "The Voyage of the Beagle" pointed at Swiss soldiers who threw themselves off ships into the sea in an innate urge to return to their homeland. Genevan philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau in a 1763 letter described Swiss nostalgia as an emotion untainted by urbanization. In contrast to French adaption to cities, the romanticized Swiss communities experienced emotions in their pure and natural form.
In 1710, Theodor Zwinger tied homesickness to patriotic sentiments that were more attuned to imperialism in the eighteenth century and conceived the word Pothopatridalgia; Algia meaning ache, Pathos is a longing, and Patria is one’s native land. Some believed that the fatal affliction was triggered by one’s sense of hearing, by auditory reminders of the homeland. It was reported that Swiss mercenaries in France and Belgium became so homesick that they deserted, fell deathly ill, or committed suicide upon hearing a type of Swiss melody known as ranz des vaches. These were regional songs used to call cows from mountain pastures. Zwinger wrote that hearing these tunes had such a harmful effect on Swiss soldiers that singing, playing, or whistling the songs was prohibited by law.
However, not all scholars believed nostalgia was specific to regions or peoples. In 1705, Swiss physician Johann Jakob Scheuchzer attributed nostalgia to maladjustment to greater atmospheric pressure, a form of reverse altitude sickness. Neither Albrecht von Haller nor Johann Georg Zimmerman believed Alpine communities were biologically susceptible to nostalgia, instead stressing the psychological character of the disorder. Haller related sociological factors to the Swiss propensity towards frequent homesickness. French naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck theorized the environment’s effect on organisms to explain men’s natural attachment to place. Immanuel Kant dismissed Heimweh as a delusion about one’s no-longer-existing past. Although harmless, Kant cautioned against conjuring fantasies of the homeland. In his 1852 medical dissertation, Par Claudius Caire explained that nostalgia grew from a passion for one’s home into madness and affected people from all walks of life throughout history.
The mass mobilization of troops in the age of colonialism materialized through nostalgia to represent colonial displacement. During the early French campaign in Algeria, reports revealed alarming numbers of soldiers falling ill to nostalgia. Soldiers were also ill-adapted to local climate and unfamiliar diseases were believed to worsen nostalgic symptoms. Army commanders saw no choice but to plea for additional soldiers. Nostalgia was associated with military life during the Napoleonic Wars of the nineteenth century when young men from provincial areas were conscripted en masse to serve in national armies.
Interestingly, larger and more disciplined armies, characteristic of the modern military, suffered nostalgia at greater rates. Accounts from the era are replete with descriptions of “epidemic nostalgia,” when homesickness swept through military units, causing mass desertions and severe illness. Soldiers who did not speak French, originated from rural communities, and were devoted to regional areas were believed to be least adjusted to serviceman life. According to records, the French army suffered more significant casualties to the disease than any other group in history, sometimes decimating entire companies of soldiers. It was no wonder then that nostalgia was considered a threat to the French nation at one point. Nostalgia also spread beyond the medical community in the 1820s and 1830s and engulfed the popular imagination.