I Long, I Pine All My Days to Travel Home and See the Dawn of My Return

Nastalgia existed away before the word itself did. People got homesick and yearned for an idea of home that no longer exists, or never existed at all. Western physicians were diagnosing nastalgia in british soldiers fighting to colonize india and in french soldiers fighting the napoleonic wars. Nastaljia also showed up years later in american soldiers. During the civil war, if you weren't home, letters were the second best cure. But while the soldiers were being diagnosed left and right, others were thought incapable of feeling nastalgia. Those whose worlds were perhaps most violently upended, who were forced from their homes, separated from their families