Buzz
In the spring of 1838, the French writer and playwright Honoré de Balzac penned a letter from Milan to his muse and future wife, Lady Hańska: “My dear, I am afflicted with homesickness! … I wander aimlessly, devoid of spirit, without energy, unable to articulate what ails me; if I continue like this for another two weeks, I will surely perish.”
Balzac wasn’t exaggerating. From the Age of Enlightenment to the early twentieth century, homesickness was regarded as a grave physical ailment that could be fatal if not treated with care.
Swiss Homesickness
In 1688, Johannes Hofer, a Swiss medical student, became the first to classify the experience of missing home as a medical condition. As Susan Matt, a historian of emotions, recounts in Homesickness: An American History, Hofer examined the case of a man from Berne who had left his hometown to study in Basel. The man grew despondent, developed a high fever, and seemed on the brink of death. He was advised to return home, and by the time he reached Berne, he had fully recovered.
What accounted for the man’s puzzling illness? Doctors at the time believed that “vital spirits” circulated throughout the body. Hofer suggested that in homesick individuals, these spirits became so preoccupied with thoughts of home that they became “exhausted,” impairing the body’s functions. Hofer wrote that the condition had “no cure other than a return to the homeland.”
Hofer needed a term for this newly identified condition. The German term heimweh and the French la maladie du pays were already in use, but there was no official medical word for the painful yearning for home. Hofer coined the term nostalgia by combining two Greek words: nostos, meaning “homecoming,” and algia, meaning “pain.” Today, we think of nostalgia as a longing for a lost time, but it originally referred to a deep longing for a specific place. (Other potential terms included: nosomania, philopatridomania, and pothopatridalgia.)
The Homesickness Epidemic
Initially, Matt writes, nostalgia was regarded as a distinctly Swiss ailment. According to Jean Starobinski, the first historian to critically examine nostalgia, one doctor attributed the condition to changes in atmospheric pressure. The doctor theorized that when a Swiss person descended from their alpine home, their blood would thin, causing it to flow less easily to the heart, leading to depression, loss of appetite, and a deadly fever. If the person couldn’t return to the mountains, the doctor recommended the most logical remedy: placing them in a hilltop or tower where they could breathe the lighter air.
The term homesickness emerged in the mid-1700s. While the exact originator remains unknown, the Oxford English Dictionary traces the word's first recorded use to 1748, in a Moravian church hymnal. Similar to nostalgia, homesickness could trigger a range of distressing symptoms such as fever, lesions, insomnia, heart palpitations, weight loss, organ failure, incontinence, and dysentery.
Soldiers appeared to be especially vulnerable to homesickness, with many deserting in part due to overwhelming longing for home. During the Civil War, Union army bands were sometimes banned from playing the beloved song “Home, Sweet Home”—and perhaps with good reason. According to Matt, over 5,000 Union soldiers were diagnosed with nostalgia, including 74 who died. One doctor even called the affliction a fate worse than syphilis.
In severe instances, homesickness led people to take their own lives. A 1899 headline read: “Fatal Nostalgia: Woman Died Because She Could Not Live Away From New York.” The article detailed how the woman, in an overwhelming moment of despair, drank a quart of whiskey and cut her wrists. Similarly, in 1915, another headline titled “Homesickness Kills: Many Soldiers, Especially Wounded or in Prison, Die From That Cause” stated:
"Homesickness, or nostalgia, as it is medically known, has long been acknowledged as a distinct military ailment that tends to particularly affect new recruits. It causes desertions, illness, and death; and although it never claims as many lives as bullets or typhoid, it can still inflict enough harm to severely disrupt an army’s effectiveness."
Searching for a Cure
Homesickness first gained attention during a period of large-scale migration, and in the 18th and 19th centuries, it was regarded as a serious affliction. By the early 20th century, people began to view it with less gravity—though Matt points out that as recently as World War II, homesickness was still recognized as a condition in the Surgeon General’s manual.
Although homesickness is no longer considered a disease, it is now seen more as an emotional challenge or adjustment issue. Recent psychological studies describe homesickness as “the emotional distress or dysfunction caused by an actual or anticipated separation from home.” In moderate amounts, homesickness signifies a healthy bond with loved ones. However, when it becomes more persistent, it may be linked to depression, anxiety, and loneliness.
So what’s the solution? Psychologists suggest that we’re less prone to homesickness when we feel connected, both socially and physically. In short, wherever you go, create a sense of belonging.
