21 6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



from it. He shuns the persons once loved best, rejects all diversions, 

 and is angered by any attempt to console him. The conviction cher- 

 ished by fancy that he shall never see his country again, and the grief 

 it inspires, bring on disturbances of function which at last affect the 

 whole natural system. His features change, his eyes grow set and 

 dull, his countenance wears a look of stupor, his motions then grow 

 languid, and betray painful indecision of will. Anaemia follows, the 

 skin becomes dry and clammy, the mucous tissues lose color, the se- 

 cretions decrease, the pulse sinks, and disturbance of the circulation 

 appears. With regard to the digestive functions, the disorder is not 

 less serious ; as the patient eats little or nothing, gastric difficulties 

 ensue. In women, chlorosis occurs, with its usual train of varied 

 nervous affections ; they neglect their dress and all their interests of 

 emotion, including coquetry ; then follow intermitting chills and night- 

 sweats, making what Broussais called the hectic fever, and Larry the 

 dry consumption of the melancholy-mad. At length the intellect and 

 the patient perish together, with a last sigh for the country never again 

 to be seen. The chief and peculiar mark of this neurosis is that the 

 sufferer knows he must die. It often happens that nostalgic j^atients 

 voluntarily starve to death or commit suicide. 



!N"ostalgia attacks by preference young people and those just enter- 

 ing youth, affecting all temperaments without distinction. It is often- 

 est remarked among soldiers. During the great wars of the Revolu- 

 tion and the Empire it often prevailed as an epidemic, and scourged 

 our armies with severity. Desgenettes relates that at St.-Jean-d'Acre 

 it added a new complication and a more fatal horror to the plague. 

 On the pontoons at Cadiz and Plymouth, that served as prisons for 

 the soldiers of General Dupont, after the capitulation of Baylen, it 

 killed as many French as died from yellow fcA'er. In. Poland and in 

 Russia it intensified all other epidemic disorders. Michel Levy says 

 that in 1831 the Twenty-first regiment of light infantry, then in the 

 Morea, received a large number of young Corsican recruits, many of 

 whom fell victims to nostalgia, in the hospital at IsTavarino. 



During the last war nostalgia carried off many sufferers among our 

 unhappy prisoners dispersed throughout Germany. It attacked the 

 soldiers and mobiles during the siege of Paris, especially toward the 

 close of it, when privations and successive defeats began to reduce the 

 most robust organizations. Many of the cases of nostalgia then ob- 

 served in the hospitals and ambulances presented a really piteous sight. 

 One instance we personally saw. The 4th of January, 1871, the young 



Marquis R , aged twenty-four, a mobile from Finisterre, entered 



the Bicetre military hospital. He had a slight varioloid and a bron- 

 chial complaint, which were certain to be cured, and actually were so. 

 Yet this illness gave him slight concern ; he was the victim of other 

 anxieties. He ate hardly any thing, and spent his time in tears and 

 prayers, refusing all efforts to distract or console him. On the 10th of 



