A debate about Nostalgia in the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia

Abstract

In Switzerland from the end of the 17th century, documentation in the military-medical field and beyond had begun to detail the pathological link between nostalgia (Heimweh or homesickness) and soldiers. Throughout the following century and the early 19th century, this sickness continued to appear in various European and American armies, prompting differing opinions among the medical profession. This paper aims to examine the dialectic within Piedmont military medical officers in the 1840s, focusing on the cause, appropriate diagnosis, and treatment to prescribe to soldiers suffering from nostalgia.
At the end of the debate, the opinion of  who supported the moral and cerebral origin of nostalgia seems to prevail, in opposition to the physicalist hypothesis of the air by the first contender, although both are influenced  by the French positivism of the first half of the 19th century. The main subsequent historical implications linked to  problems of nostalgia are briefly indicated and discussed.