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These Insane Viral Trends and Fads Overtook History Long Before the Internet

Khalid Elhassan July 13, 2022 37 min

Viral - Marathon dancers in 1923 — Marathon dancers in 1923. Library of Congress

8. When Wanderlust Went Viral

Viral - Dromomania makes people wander aimlessly — Dromomania makes people wander aimlessly. Walk, Read, and Write

Most of us like to travel, and see a bit of the world from time to time. However, some people take that to extremes. We’re not talking backpacker types and those driven by an adventurous spirit who roam the world for years on end, but ones who literally can’t stop wandering. Dromomania is the medical term for an uncontrollable psychological urge to aimlessly walk, wander, and travel. It was classified alongside other impulse control disorders, such as pyromania and kleptomania.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, dromomania became a viral rage in France. Tourism can be like an addictive drug. One of the best case studies on that was that of Jean Albert Dadas, a gas fitter from Bordeaux, France. In 1881, as he served his term of conscription in the French Army, Dadas went AWOL in order to travel. He abandoned his post and headed to Prague in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and from there, to the German capital, Berlin.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.