These days, we often consider nostalgia to be a complicated but mostly harmless emotion. It’s full of pathos but, like heartache, it’s something you live with or get over. But it has not always been thus.
From the late 17th through the late 19th centuries, nostalgia was mostly viewed as a legitimate medical condition. Doctors argued that it was a physical ailment because they did not yet share the modern, sharp distinction between the mind and the body. Emotions were seen as “the passions” that could directly deplete a person’s physical “animal spirits” and vital reserves. Their arguments were underlined by a series of seemingly physical symptoms linked to nostalgic sentiments. When people pined for some past time or some distant homeland, they reported lethargy, fever, and heart palpitations. Some died from starvation, as their nostalgia reached such a peak that they turned from the present entirely.
In her book, Nostalgia: A History of a Dangerous Emotion, Agnes Arnold-Forster lays out the bizarre and often cruel history of a condition that is not a condition today. She shows us that human nature might be the same, but the stories we tell about our feelings have shifted entirely. So, here is the dark history of nostalgia.
The nostalgia doctors
In this week’s Mini Philosophy newsletter, we look at the complex modern debate about the joys and dangers of nostalgia. In the European early modern period, nostalgia was unambiguously dreadful. There were roughly two forms. First, you had a physical “malady of place,” which was an intense, dangerous homesickness that, some doctors argued, could turn fatal. Second, thinkers like Immanuel Kant argued it was not a longing for a specific place but for youth itself and its simple pleasures, labeling it as a disease of the imagination. I suspect that most of us tend to use the latter Kantian definition when we think of nostalgia.
As with any wrongly understood condition, the doctors of the era threw out all sorts of peculiar explanations and remedies. The 18th-century Swiss physician Johann Jakob Scheuchzer claimed that nostalgia was caused by abrupt changes in air pressure. He argued that when mountain-dwelling people descended to the lowlands, the increased atmospheric pressure forced blood into their brains and hearts, causing the “affliction of sentiment.” And vice versa. In 1968, the Lebanese psychoanalyst Dominique Geahchan interpreted nostalgia as a subconscious obsession with one’s mother (as all psychoanalysts are wont to do). Geahchan said it was a pining for an idealized version of childhood, and that this fixation could lead to a form of “narcissistic madness.” Meanwhile, in Civil War-era America, Roberts Bartholow was sure that excessive masturbation was what made a man turn nostalgic.
One of my favorite stories is of the Swiss physician Thomas Zwinger. In 1710, Zwinger argued that music was an especially egregious trigger for nostalgia. His ideas were taken up so seriously that the Swiss milking song “Khüe-Reyen” was banned. The song was considered such a dangerous trigger among mercenary soldiers that its playing was punishable by death to prevent mass desertion or debilitating melancholy.
The nostalgia cures
With such a litany of quacks offering their armchair opinions on the topic, you’ll be unsurprised to learn that the remedies were often weirder than the causes. At least some of them were consistent. For instance, if nostalgia was caused by Scheuchzer’s theory of atmospheric pressure, then his remedy — of having soldiers and sufferers stay in very tall towers for a short period—makes sense.
Some of the “cures” were fairly harmless. A doctor would let a small amount of a patient’s blood using leeches, have them drink morphine concoctions, or endure a short stint at a warm-water spa with “recreational therapies” like pleasant conversation and outdoor exercise. Not a bad outcome, really. For younger victims, such as children sent away to boarding school, a more humane but fairly reasonable treatment involved gradual conditioning. Doctors would slowly increase the time the child spent away from their primary nurse or caregiver to help them adjust to life without the constant presence of home.
Some of the prescriptions, however, were undeniably cruel. The 17th-century French doctor Jourdan Le Cointe was known to threaten patients with a red-hot poker, believing that the intense fear of being burned would “shock” them out of their nostalgic state. In 1733, a Russian general reportedly warned his troops that any soldier who succumbed to a bout of nostalgia would be buried alive. He reportedly carried out this threat at least once to ensure his men remained focused on the battlefield rather than their homes.
Most brutally logical of all was the “manliness” cure. As with a lot of the pre-21st-century era, many people viewed those who suffered from mental illness as weak in some way. If you were depressed, anxious, and, of course, nostalgic, then that was your fault. A slap across the face. Pull yourself together. “Man up.” Because nostalgia was seen as especially bad for men. And so, in the 19th century, and particularly within military settings, treatments included ridicule that would “shame” a soldier out of his nostalgia. The ultimate cure was often considered an active military campaign or hard labor to keep the mind distracted. After the American Civil War, the military doctor Thomas Calhoun maintained that nostalgia was a sign of unmanliness. And so, his “cure” consisted of public humiliation and bullying.
The road to now
In the late 19th century, doctors moved towards a clearer distinction between the mind and body. Physical symptoms once attributed to “nostalgia” — such as fever and heart palpitations — were correctly identified as separate medical conditions, while the emotional distress was moved to the realm of psychology.
These days, the shift has almost been 180 degrees. While nostalgia remains “bittersweet” because it reinforces the fact that the past is gone, it is considered a natural and common emotion that many people experience weekly. At worst, it’s viewed as a slight heartache that reminds us of the good and golden times of years gone by. At its best, it’s a pleasant sense of reliving the past.
Nostalgia is a visceral reminder that our feelings are both complex and powerful. While the old doctors were wrong about the cure, they were right about its weight: We are defined by what we cherish. We miss the old days and associate them with a place or people. And when we do so, I think we should all meet at the warm water spa and talk about the good times we miss.
This article Buried alive, leeched, and attacked with a poker: The dark history of nostalgia “cures” is featured on Big Think.
