8. When Wanderlust Went Viral
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.