In July of 1518, a woman referred to as Frau Troffea stepped into a narrow street in Strasbourg, France and began a fervent dancing vigil that lasted between four and six days. By the end of the week, 34 others had joined her and, within a month, the crowd of dancing, hopping and leaping individuals had swelled to 400.
Authorities prescribed “more dancing” to cure the tormented movers but, by summer’s end, dozens in the Alsatian city had died of heart attacks, strokes and sheer exhaustion due to nonstop dancing.
For centuries this bizarre event, known variously as the dancing plague or epidemic of 1518, has stumped scientists attempting to find a cause for the mindless, intense and ultimately deadly dance. Historian John Waller, author of the forthcoming book, “A Time to Dance, A Time to Die: The Extraordinary Story of the Dancing Plague of 1518,” studied the illness at length and has solved the mystery.
Sadly it still inflicts many, even today:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Frd0CPYuZgU
must get that book i’m intrigued.
Funny to think ergot poisoning used to be an undesirable side-effect of mouldy bread, but now you can sell it at nightclubs for £20 a hit.
I’ve always had a brazen ambition to go round a rave club with a ziplock bag of chalky vitamin C tablets each printed with a saffron-yellow food dye smiley face and flog them to ravers for £10 a hit. I have my deliberately vague sales pitch all worked out:”It’s new on the market, give it about 15 minutes and you’ll start to feel good” [technically not a lie: it will make you feel good as part of a balanced diet!]
Is this fraud? Could I be arrested for selling healthy alternatives? Would the placebo effect carry the day?
Would I get out of the club without getting lynched?
I’m probably too much of a natural coward to find out… Perhaps I’ll save it for next time I have a deathwish!
I bet Derren could convince them they were hallucinating on “C” though!
I’ve got teh dancing disease! Suspected cause? : DERREN COMES INTO GLASGOW TODAY!!!!
lol
@ flapjack
You joke, but I used to live in Bedford that had an annual music festival – glastonbury on the cheap. The year I went there were over 100 arrests of “drug dealers”, but later it turned out they got not one single conviction. No one were selling anything illegal – most were selling aspirin – presumably to make you feel “good” despite the awful music.
@ Tom P – lol, you beat me to it.
Weird…I just found out this past Easter that my Dad had St. Vitus Dance as a kid. (I’m 31 now, which is why I mention…seemed like something I shoulda known earlier for some reason.) He said that at the time (some 60 years ago now) the treatment was seeing a chiropractor (which surprised me) and riding horse for a few hours a day as it was thought that the jostling of the spine would help. He remembers knocking off his mothers hat a couple of times and being literally strapped to the bed so he didn’t hurt himself. He had to be held down and put in a sort of headlock by his parents in order to be fed. I thought it all very interesting, so thought I’d share with you since we’re all reading this article. Unusual to be sure.
=)
Whooshdemon – Damn, they stole my idea! In future I’ll copyright all my fraudulent moneyspinners!
Only one problem with using asprin… asprin allergies affect a small minority of folks, but then again, you probably still have a better rate of survival than you get with the class A alternatives!
And I guess unlike my vitamin C’s, asprins don’t have that giveaway orangey tang …
I wonder how correct these writings have been from way back. I vaguely remember having heard about the belgium incident and an hour ago they showed on tv an incident in which 1 guy started dancing .. followed by approx. 400 people.
We do this dancing stuff all the time ofcourse … if they check people’s facial expressions when really into the music and dancing they will show fear and such at times as well …
Tribes here and there will trigger these ‘trance’-like states via dancing as well as we know.
Lots of not so weird examples there.
Till you drop dead? Happens still at times.
The media back then may have been not so much different than now .. not always that correct .. not willing to see the truth as then there is nothing to tell, no news.
If crowds start dancing the people in it normally know what they are doing and why. They dont know always to what limit they were willing to dance .. get out of theirselves … into that other state .. at times with a little help of some drugs ..
David Bowie asked us to do it …
There was a short piece about this on BBC Radio 4′s Today Programme in September last year.
“Authorities prescribed ‘more dancing’ to cure the tormented movers”
It is evil and wrong that I find that line so incredibly funny.
I think I saw this on Buffy the Vampire Slayer…
I blame the Lord of the Dance….
‘Dance, dance where ever you may be, I am the Lord of the Dance said he’
@Siobhan, you beat me to it! I had that song goinjg round my head as I read it. It’ll be stuck there for days now! lol.
x
Haha I see my theory that dancing is a primal compultion, actually has a little evidance to support it. As cave men drilled holes in their skulls to cure headaches, we dance as a cure as well. I’m begining to see it’s in our nature