Nostalgia

Nostalgia (Gr. nostos, 'the return home'; algos, 'pain'), a technical term for home-sickness which, when as sometimes it takes the form of acute melancholia, becomes ruinous to health, and even fatal. It is said that inhabitants of mountainous countries suffer more keenly than others; but it seems to have less to do with affection for the physical features of home than with inability to break with old habits and modes of life. In armies it has been found necessary to adopt measures to prevent desertion on this ground. In Canada the playing of Lochaber no More by the pipers of Highland regiments had to be interdicted; and so in France it was forbidden under pain of death to sing or play the Ranz des Vaches in the hearing of Swiss mercenaries.