There’s been a strange epidemic lately
Going amongst the folk,
So that many in their madness
Began dancing,
Which they kept up day and night,
Without interruption,
Until they fell unconscious.
Many have died of it.
– A Strasbourg Chronicler
The year was 1518. Strasbourg, in modern day France, had recently succumbed to a smallpox epidemic, the loss of life in war and most of the population was impoverished and suffering from yet another famine. There was not much to celebrate. But in July 1518, Frau Troffea stepped out into the street and began to dance.
Onlookers must have watched on in amusement, but after three days had passed Frau Troffea was still dancing – contorting her body in a trance like state. Paracelsus, a physician writing in 1532, describes that she spasmed and went to sleep, but woke up and continued to dance.
After a week of non-stop dancing however, onlookers began to think that she had been punished by God, and more to the point by St. Vitus. Locally venerated, this saint was said to have the power to punish people by dancing (don’t ask me why). A common curse in Strasbourg was ‘God give you St. Vitus!’. Frau Troffea was sent to a shrine dedicated to this saint and she disappears from the record. But by this time some 34 people had joined her in the same frantic dancing.
By August 1518, 400 people had joined in and were enthusiastically dancing in the streets and in groups until they dropped down dead from a mixture of exhaustion and heart attacks. According to one chronicler, they literally danced their feet to the bone.
The city authorities were caught off guard by this dancing epidemic and consulted astronomers and physicians. They decided that these dancers were suffering from ‘hot blood’ – alluding to the Four Humours theory which was common medical practice during the period. They deduced that the cure was to sweat out the illness.
The swelling number of dancers were made to continue. A large wooden stage was constructed and guildhalls were opened to permit the afflicted. Musicians and professional dancers were hired to encourage the strange group of trance-like dancers. Another 16th century chronicler, Specklin, accounts how groups of citizens joined in the dancing simply to access the free food and wine which had been donated to the event. It was said at one point that 15 people were dying daily from dancing non-stop day and night.
The authorities then outlawed public dancing for those not suffering from the disease. Other ungodly acts such as gambling was also prohibited. The hundreds of dancers on the stage, in the guildhalls and also still in the streets were increasingly carted off to shrines dedicated to St. Vitus. By the end of September 1518, Strasbourg had seemed to have recovered from this manic ‘Dancing Plague’.
Why?
Good question, and historians and doctors alike cannot agree why this strange event happened.
It was not even unprecedented. There had been several occurences of dancing epidemics in Europe alone beforehand albeit not on such a grand scale than in Strasbourg.
In the German town of Kölbigk on Christmas Eve in 1021, an enfuriated priest had to abandon giving his service due to a group of around 20 people who were dancing wildly in a circle while chanting. He damned them to dance for a year as punishment – and the curse actually came to fruition. Over the next year a local chronicler wrote of how people would dance themselves to death in the town.
There are two theories which have gained traction.
Contamination?
It has been put forward that a substance called Ergot could have infected the food supply in Strasbourg – dwelling inside bread made from contaminated flour. This substance is known to infect and cause hallucinations and erratic behaviour. Yet it does not account for how suddenly hundreds of people began to dance for days on end.
Mass Hysteria?
John Waller has written extensively on this issue, and wrote:
‘It was a world so glutted with misery that nearly all ranks of society drank and danced whenever the opportunity, with the intensity of those in flight from an intolerable reality’
The tough situation which Strasbourg had experienced has already been alluded too. But to combine the pressures of famine, disease on a devoutly Christian society could have well began an episode of mass hysteria amongst the impoverished people in the city. With St. Vitus known to congregations, it would not be out of reason to suggest that, with such pressures mounted on their shoulders, they believed that they were being punished by God through the saint.
In more contemporary times, in 1962, students of an all-girls boarding school in Kashasah in Tanzania reportedly succumbed to a laughter epidemic. With 95 students affected, the school was forced to close and they were sent out of the village in an effort to stop the spread. Incredibly other schools within the region began reporting similar instances with over a thousand students in total affected – experiencing bouts of laughter lasting from a few hours to a couple of days.
Personally I’m inclined to believe the latter argument.
Further information:
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2809%2960386-X/fulltext
http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/258521
https://www.futilitycloset.com/2014/04/22/the-dancing-plague/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_7608000/7608874.stm
http://www.history.com/news/ask-history/what-was-the-dancing-plague-of-1518
https://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/volume-22/edition-7/dancing-plagues-and-mass-hysteria
https://www.britannica.com/topic/history-of-Europe/The-emergence-of-modern-Europe-1500-1648
History Quirks 
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