The daily morning journal and courier., 1899-07-15
HOMESICKNESS.

flcts Other Races Than the Anglo
 Saxon.
 There is a malady which boasts of a
 learned appellation compounded of two Greek words, but which is better known by homelier and far more expressive name in the vernacuiar, and yet al-
 though this bnomial disorder is de- 1 scribed in the dictionaries as "A vehe- ment desire * affecting the phy- sical health,' it has not been assigned a place i'll the Nomenclature of Diseases for which the Royal College of Physi- clans of London is responsible The 1 fact, too, that homesickness, if imper- vious to drugs is nevertheless in the highest degree anenable to treatment, might credibly seem to still further jus l tify it's inclusion in the official glos sary of the 1053 natural shocks that flesh is heir to. With regard to the eti- ology of this unqualified complain there still remain several points requiring elu- cidation, albeit in it's genesis no bacillus is concerned, nor for it's adequate diag nosis is there any need of either micro scope or test tube.
 Shortly stated the essential factor in
  onment differing from that midst which the affected person passed his or her early days. When this is the case some intangible influence is generated which reacts upon the victim, but just as happens in many official maladies there must first be innate receptivity or preparedness of soil on the part of the individual who succumbs. This recep tive state is favored by at least three separate things-race, education and temperament-but of these predsposing causes the last possesses less power than either of the others. Caeteris pari- bus, phlegmatic subjects are more likely to experience homesickness than their sanguine compeers. A tendency to de- spond without sufficient cause undoubt- edly subserves toward nostalgia, but ar dent, enthusiastic people who continu- ally look forward-who never are, but always to behave the advantage, if ad- vantage it be, of remaining immune.
 Education, or rather the want of it, is more potent than temperament, the trend of civilization, which is equiva- lent to education, being distinctly in the direction of cosmopolitanism. The deep- CT the ignorance, the ruder the condi- tions of life under which a human be- ing exists, the greater the probability when exposed to its influence of his ac- quiring nostalgia. If an islander from Tierra del Fuego, for instance, were to be transported to the comparative para disc of the Gilbert Islands in the Pa cifc Ocean which have been described as "a cluster of pearls hung upon the equator" he would very likely bewail his hard lot and pine for his own incle- ment and inhospitable wilderness, and if in like manner Pacific Gilbertian were to be promoted to, say, Pail Mall-which without wishing to speak dlsrespectfully of the equator. We maintain to be the more desirable abode of the two-he also would no doubt soon break hIs heart longing for the delights of his sWeltering hut in Micronesia.
 But of the three predisponents race it is which is the strangest and most in- AngloSaxons and their Celtic brethren vary their manners and customs while abroad to a less extent probably than people of any other na tionality, and yet In spite of this they make the best colonists. There is no human being in existence who can ap- preciate the charm of home more exquisitely than the Celtic-Anglo- Saxon, and yet he is to be met with in every corner of the world. He loves his own native place beyond words, but he can endure enforced repatriation with out giving in to nostalgia. The fact is he recognizes the futility of kicking against the bricks and so makes his mind up to sacrifice a portion of his life or even if the worst come to the worst the whole of it. For nostalgics we must turn to some other tribe. When all is said they remain a narrow-minded crew whose mental processes run in grooves. They may call their failing by the high sounding name of patriotism, but such 1 is it not.
 Nostalgia is the cats complaint, | purely selfish disorder, whereas love of | can flourish anywhere and | takes no account of self. And so after | all our masters in medicine are perfectly | right. Nostalgia is rghteously excluded | from list of the shocks that Anglo Saxon flesh is heir to-T yancat