Dancing Plague of 1518

Engraving of Hendrik Hondius portrays three women affected by the plague. Work based on original drawing by Peter Brueghel, who supposedly witnessed a subsequent outbreak in 1564 in Flanders

The Dancing Plague (or Dance Epidemic) of 1518 was a case of dancing mania that occurred in Strasbourg, France (then part of the Holy Roman Empire) in July 1518. Numerous people took to dancing for days without rest, and, over the period of about one month, some of the people died from heart attack, stroke, or exhaustion.

Events

The outbreak began in July 1518, when a woman, Frau Troffea, began to dance fervently in a street in Strasbourg.^[1] This lasted somewhere between four to six days. Within a week, 34 others had joined, and within a month, there were around 400 dancers. Some of these people eventually died from heart attack, stroke, or exhaustion.^[1]

Historical documents, including "physician notes, cathedral sermons, local and regional chronicles, and even notes issued by the Strasbourg city council" are clear that the victims danced.^[1] It is not known why these people danced to their deaths.

As the dancing plague worsened, concerned nobles sought the advice of local physicians, who ruled out astrological and supernatural causes, instead announcing that the plague was a "natural disease" caused by "hot blood." However, instead of prescribing bleeding, authorities encouraged more dancing, in part by opening two guildhalls and a grain market, and even constructing a wooden stage. The authorities did this because they believed that the dancers would only recover if they danced continuously night and day. To increase the effectiveness of the cure, authorities even paid for musicians to keep the afflicted moving.^[2] Some of the dancers were taken to a shrine, where they sought a cure for their affliction.

Modern explanations

Mass psychogenic illness

Historian John Waller thinks that the dancing epidemic was caused by mass psychogenic illness (MPI), a manifestation of mass hysteria that is often preceded by extreme levels of psychological distress. Waller states that famine had been prevalent in the region for some time, caused by very cold winters, very hot summers, crop frosts, and violent hailstorms.^[1][3] Mass deaths followed from malnutrition, and those who survived were forced to kill their farm animals, take out loans, and perhaps even beg in the streets. In addition to food shortages, diseases such as smallpox, syphilis, leprosy, and "the English sweat" (a new disease) afflicted the populace, as well as "spiritual despair on a scale unknown for generations."^[3] This series of events might have triggered the MPI.

Ergotism

It has been suggested that the cause of the plague was ergotism, which results from consuming ergot-laced bread. Ingestion of ergot, a psychotropic mold that grows on rye, can lead to delirium, hallucinations, and seizures, as well as other symptoms. While today this is called ergotism, contemporaneously it was known as "Saint Anthony's fire." However, another symptom of ergotism is loss of blood supply to the limbs, making coordinated movement like dancing difficult; as such, Waller considers it to be an unlikely cause of the plague.^[3]

Ecstatic ritual

Sociologist Robert Bartholomew of James Cook University in Australia contends that the dance was part of an "ecstatic ritual of a heretical sect."^[1] This explanation is questioned by Waller, who believes "there is no evidence that the dancers wanted to dance," citing recorded evidence that the dancers showed expressions of "fear and desperation."^[1]

Chorea

Chorea, which can be present in epilepsy or a variety of other nervous system disorders, can be characterised by quick, patterned muscular contractions, or sometimes slower, stormy, writhing motions (athetosis). In a 1931 Time article, it was suggested that victims of "Saint Vitus's dance" (in this context, Sydenham's chorea)—who are most often children—were brought before images of St. Vitus when they were stricken with convulsions.^[4] Saint Vitus's dance has become the term used for the dancing manias of medieval times (as well as for Sydenham's chorea or chorea in general). Saint Vitus is primarily invoked to protect against epilepsy, a disorder characterised by recurrent unprovoked seizures.

Catholic legend says that invoking the wrath of St. Vitus could provoke compulsive dancing^[1] (or that dancing before an image of St. Vitus would imbue good health for the following year).^[4] However, this explanation does not support how so many cases of chorea could arise simultaneously in the population, nor how so many adults were affected.

Further reading

• Backman, Eugene Louis (1977) [First published in 1952]. Religious Dances in the Christian Church and in Popular Medicine. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. ISBN 978-0837196787. 
• Waller, John (2008). A Time to Dance, A Time to Die: The Extraordinary Story of the Dancing Plague of 1518. Thriplow: Icon Books. ISBN 978-1848310216. 
• Waller, John (2009). The Dancing Plague: The Strange, True Story of an Extraordinary Illness. Naperville, IL: Sourcebooks, Inc.. ISBN 978-1-4022-1943-6. 

See also

• Tanganyika laughter epidemic

References

1. ^ ^{a b c d e f g} Viegas, Jennifer (1 August 2008). "'Dancing Plague' and Other Odd Afflictions Explained". Discovery News. Discovery Communications. http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/08/01/dancing-death-mystery.html. Retrieved 8 August 2008. 
2. ^ Waller, John C. (September 2008). "In a spin: the mysterious dancing epidemic of 1518". Endeavour (Elsevier) 32 (3): 117–121. doi:10.1016/j.endeavour.2008.05.001. ISSN 0160-9327. PMID 18602695. 
3. ^ ^{a b c} Waller, John (12 September 2008). "Dancing death". British Broadcasting Corporation. http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_7608000/7608874.stm. Retrieved 16 January 2009. 
4. ^ ^{a b} "Fever v. St. Vitus's Dance". Time. 28 September 1931. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,742341,00.html. Retrieved 9 August 2008. 

External links

• "Dancing death" by John Waller. BBC News. 12 September 2008.
• "The Dancing Plague of 1518" by Doug MacGowan. Historic Mysteries. 28 June 2011.