the.com/homesickness
grief for a place that exists more in memory than on any map.
means The melancholy longing you feel when separated from home and the familiar comforts of family and place.
from A fairly literal compound of "home" plus "sickness" — an English calque of the German "Heimweh" ("home-woe"), which Swiss physicians of the 17th century treated as a genuine medical malady, the same condition they Latinized as "nostalgia" from Greek "nostos" (homecoming) and "algos" (pain). The plainer "homesickness" entered English in the 18th century, trading the doctor's vocabulary for the kitchen-table kind.
medical termcalled nostalgia, once classified as a deadly disease
swiss soldiersbanned from singing a folk tune that triggered it
physical paincan cause real fever, fatigue, and racing heart
not about placeoften longing for a past self, not geography
cure attempts17th-century doctors prescribed leeches and opium