Jasper County Democrat, Volume 1, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 October 1898 — HOMESICKNESS. [ARTICLE]

HOMESICKNESS.

How This Strange Disease, When in Severe Form, Causes Death. There are few of us who have never known the pangs of homesickness, and those few are rather to be pitied than envied. Homesickness in mild form ia a sign of a gentle mind, and indicate* the possession of a love of home and country which is the characteristic of civilized and normal man. This mild form, fortunately, is the only kind which most of us have experienced, for when the severe form takes possession of a person it is a terrible disease, causing untold misery and even death. This severe form, usually called nostalgia, has grown less common in these days of quick communication, of rapid transmission of news and of a widespread knowledge of geography. The element of ignorance of one’s surroundings and consequent sense of helplessness and despair of ever seeing home again, w’hich in times gone by so oppressed the sufferer from nostalgia, is now removed except in the case of the very young or the densely ignorant. , The greatest sufferers are Highlanders, German and Swiss mountaineers, or the Celtic Scots, and men are more apt to be overcome than women. The victim of this extreme form of homesickness is almost always a resourceless person, one whose life is a routine of trivialities, whose ideas are few aud limited, and such as they are, based upon familiar objects and wellknown associates. When such a person is placed in new surroundings no new Ideas are created, but there is a gnawing longing for the past, which is the more intense as a return seems impossible. The patient, for such he really Is, broods over what he has lost, rejects what is offered in place of it, and becomes apathetic and taciturn. Sleep becomes fitful, and is disturbed by vivid dreams of home. The appetite falls, digestion grows poor, and the sufferer becomes thin and haggard. There is headache, with dullne’SS of intellect and finally, perhaps, a condition of complete indifference to everybody and everything which may end in death from a failure of the vital organs to perform their functions. There is little to do for cases of this sort where there is no possibility of a return home, though sometimes a study of the map and of the routes by which return can be made, and the birth of a hope that conditions may change and the separation from the beloved spot not be final, may bring about a restoration to mental health, especially if the hope is based upon the sufferer’s own efforts to that end.