Throughout history, humanity has been facing countless viruses which caused plenty of lethal epidemics such as Plagues, Cholera and recently the Coronavirus. But have you ever thought that dancing, a simple way to celebrate and express enjoyment, can also turn to a deadly pandemic? Well, about 502 years ago, that was just the case in Strasbourg, Alsace (currently in france).
In july 1518, the locals of Strasbourg were about to face one of the weirdest plagues humanity has ever witnessed: The dancing plague, a hysterical mass dancing mania made people dance for continuous days nonstop until many of them collapsed dead! It all started when a woman named "Frau Troffea" went to the street and started dancing without a break. After few days, a group of 30 person joined her at this crazy fatal "party", but the worse is yet to come. In August of the same year, the pandemic spread even more, making 400 people dancing day and night, some of whom died because of heart attacks, Apoplexy and of course exhaustion.
There are many theories trying to explain what really happened back then. The first one claims that it was a mass psychosis due to the high stress caused by the poverty, starvation and diseases the region was dealing with. A second theory suggests that the victims were food poisoned because of ergot fungi, but it's hard to imagine someone poisoned and able to dance for days. Another theory made by a saint says that god was mad at them and decided to curse the city...
For some reason, doctors at that time thought the only cure was to let the dancers just dance to get rid of " the negative energy" they have, even encouraged them to keep dancing by paying some musicians to play music, making the situation even worse than it already was. The following days nothing really changed until September 1518, when the pandemic vanished mysteriously just the same way it started.
Clearly, we have alot of missing parts here, as any other incident in the midieval era, but the sure thing is it wasn't just a fairy tale since this case was mentioned in the historical records of that year, besides, there is also some records about similar events in Germany, Switzerland and Holland.
That was the story of the dancing plague, a vague event from history. And what makes history exciting are those kind of mysteries.
Do you have another theory? if so go ahead and share it in the comments. Thanks for reading!
*image source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hondius_brugje.jpg
i loved this article when i started reading it was pleasant surprice