Dancing Plague of 1518, also known as the Dancing Mania is referred to as a mysterious event that happened in Strasbourg in modern-day France, which caused more than 400 people to dance in an uncontrolled manner and many people died while dancing. The people danced for days and this mass hysteria ended itself after 2 months. So what was exactly this event, how this happened and what are the theories regarding this event let's analyse.
The Event
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| The Modern-Day City of Strasbourg in France |
This all began on 14th July 1518 in the city of Strasbourg in the Holy Roman Empire (present-day France) when a woman named Frau Troffea started dancing in the street. There was no reason for Frau to dance, neither there was no festival going on nor there was any music being played on the street, she was dancing for no reason, Though Frau's husband tries to stop her dance he fails. She danced till dusk and she fell unconscious due to her tiredness. The next day Frau regains consciousness and starts to dance again with caring the bad condition of her legs she only eats and drink less as she was busy in her dance and her unstoppable and painful dance continued for 6 days.
Authorities were shocked to know about the unstoppable dance of Frau Troffea and within a week around 34 people started their non-stop dance in the streets of Strasbourg.
As time passed by many more people also got affected by this dancing mania and starts their unstoppable dance for no reason and the authorities starts to take action to stop this.
Authorities consulted the physicians and they concluded that all this was all because of the overheated blood in the human body and physicians also stated that to remove excess blood in the human body as a solution to this dancing mania. Though this sounds stupid, what else can we expect from the early 14th century physicians?
As the victims were dancing in this case, so it was very hard to control all of them individually, so the physicians suggested letting them dance to cool down their blood which will eventually stop this dancing mania.
Then music programs were arranged in the streets and professional dancers were also hired to dance among the affected people and the city guild house was transformed into a dance floor, basically, dance was strongly emphasized. But this technique strongly backfired as the cases of dancing mania increased and around 14 people died dancing.
Authorities quickly realised that the overheated blood theory is nothing more than foolishness and they adopted another method to stop this dancing mania which was related to the curse of St. Vitus.
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| St.Vitus |
Officials in the city council believed that St. Vitus had cursed the dancing victims which caused people to dance in an unstoppable manner, this whole theory was based on the fact that people used to dance in front of the St. Vitus on his birthday.
The cases didn't decline even after begging pardon in front of the shrine of St. Vitus and within a month, around 400 people were dancing in an uncontrolled manner.
In such a situation, the authorities banned dance, parties and music in an attempt to stop this dancing mania.
Worst affected people like Frau Troffea were sent to the shrine of St.Vitus and surprisingly she along with many other people successfully recovered from this dancing mania.
Priests at that time sprinkled holy water on the affected person and then give the affected person cross to hold in an attempt to cure them.
Many people recover from this dancing mania with all these processes and it's also a fact that many recovered without any processes.
Around two months later, the dancing mania came to an end. It was completely stopped and the people who got affected by this mania either died or recovered.
Causes of this Event
Though at that time nobody had a clearcut answer about why this dancing plague happened in 1526 a Swiss physician named Paracelsus suggested that dancing mania was a result of certain involuntary actions of human beings which compelled the victims to dance.
Many modern scientists and historians put forward their theories on this mysterious event. Some historians suggest that the dancing plague was caused by a fungus called Ergot. They argue that as ergot grows on rye and related plants people may have accidentally consumed it as the rye grain is used for flour, bread, beer, crispbread, and some whiskeys etc. Ergot is a fungus that can cause hallucinations, jerking and involuntary body movements.
Though this theory seems to be true, historian John Waller denies this theory. According to him, the people of Strasbourg was about to do something weird and in this case, it was a mass hysterical dance.
Waller argues that dancing mania was a stress-induced psychosis on a mass level. He says that many cases of hysterical dancing happened in western Europe between 1374 and 1518 because of many reasons like poverty, political instability and disease outbreaks.
Strasbourg was also affected by a severe drought just a year before dancing mania and in such a circumstance the people here were in deep mental distress. A normal woman like Frau Troffea had to live in such a bad time which adversely affected her mental health.
To coup up with this mental stress, the body reacted and hence the unstoppable dance began.
If you're thinking why specifically dancing it's because at that time people thought that St.Vitus had cursed them.
Remember at that time most of the people weren't happy with their lives and when people saw Frau Troffea dancing they also followed her and danced. Our brain is very complicated and medical science is still trying to study this type of wired behaviour. Though we don't have a clear cut answer for the cause of this mass hysteria. But the theory of John Waller is the widely accepted one as we can relate it to the modern-day rave culture where many people especially dance for a long time along with DJ music with limited food under the influence of drugs.
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