Clot Bey treated homesickness as an official army medical disease

Evidence

Home-sickness [al-ishtiyāq ila al-waṭan] is a disease that often afflicts the new soldiers after leaving their homes, families and things familiar to them. This leads them to depression, melancholy, soreness, tiredness and sometimes to death. Therefore, they have to be kept occupied as much as possible and to be promised their imminent return home … As much as possible soldiers have to be kept in a happy, content state and their officers have to be ordered to be gentle with them … and to make them believe that the dangers they are about to encounter are not grave. — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 1102

Categorization

Category: Definitional Content

  • DEFINE: Defines the Arabic term al-ishtiyāq ila al-waṭan as a formalized army medical category.
  • XREF: Illustrates how a modernizing state bureaucratized psychological suffering into a treatable malady.