from it. He shuns the persons once loved best, rejects all diversions, and is angered by any attempt to console him. The conviction cherished 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. Anæmia follows, the skin becomes dry and clammy, the mucous tissues lose color, the secretions 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 patients voluntarily starve to death or commit suicide.
Nostalgia attacks by preference young people and those just entering youth, affecting all temperaments without distinction. It is oftenest remarked among soldiers. During the great wars of the Revolution 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 fever. In Poland and in Russia it intensified all other epidemic disorders. Michel Lévy 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 Navarino.
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 observed 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 Bicêtre military hospital. He had a slight varioloid and a bronchial 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
