Obscure Occurrences : The Dancing Plague

 On a hot July day in 1518, Frau Troffea, a German housewife, stepped out of her house in Strasbourg after an argument with her husband. She danced in the streets of her small town all day, to the embarrassment of her husband, who was not himself equally compelled to dance in any way. Her dancing went on for hours before she finally collapsed from exhaustion.

Outbreak

 Frau stopped dancing long enough for a few hours of restless sleep before waking the next day and tapping her toes bloody again. A crowd began to form around this seemingly insane woman, rhythmically moving her bruised body and bloody feet to a piece of music that did not exist. Initially, they assumed she was acting out of rebellion against her husband, who had apparently asked her to do something she didn’t want to. However, as the dancing continued for hours together, people began wondering if she was possessed by something nefarious.

 The housewife allegedly seemed to be in a trance, showing no facial expression, emotion or realization. The woman eventually collapsed again, but she continued her frantic dance moves after waking up. This enervating cycle had repeated itself umpteen times and her dancing had become more jerky and violent with each passing iteration. Eventually, Frau Troffea was taken to a nearby shrine, where the compulsive frenzy continued.

 Within a week from the commencement of her involuntary dancing, Frau had formed a whole dance troupe, with roughly 30 others catching the jitterbug and joining her in a spontaneous, irresistible dance-off. The dancing mania, as it was eventually labelled, spread to more people in Strasbourg, with estimates as high as 400 people involuntarily joining her dance crew. It quickly grew into a full-grown crisis that the city council had no clue how to manage.

(Source: Wikimedia)

 The Dancers were in obvious pain, screaming in agony and begging for mercy from whatever bizarre affliction they were suffering from, as they continued dancing despite soaking their shoes in blood. As the summer stretched on and the temperatures rose, as many as 15 people were dancing to their death every day.

 The city council did not know if the growing movement was caused by something medical or religious. They met with experts in religion and medicine, trying to diagnose the problem and shut it down for good. The group went back and forth on whether this was caused by God, the Devil or an undiscovered form of sickness.

"Hot Blood"

 The doctors in the group leaned towards a rational explanation, diagnosing the exhausted dancing maniacs with a probable case of hot blood. In line with their theory, hot blood was a problem with the balance in a person's humors. In a case of hot blood, doctors believed the brain would overheat, which in turn would cause madness. The typical remedy for the condition was bloodletting. However, given these victims' specific inability to voluntarily stop moving, physically removing any blood, regardless of temperature, wasn't a feasible course to take. So, they prescribed even more dancing.

(Source: History of Sorts)

 The doctors hired musicians to get the crowd hyped and brought in extras to mix up the energy of the party, hoping of burning out the dancers, but to no avail. This cure proved to be less than fruitful, as it exasperated the problem instead of solving it

 As the exhausted dancers were beginning to stumble and slow down, the musicians sped up the tempo, causing the townspeople to move faster with the music. Not only did these party beats fail to stop the sporadic dancing, but they also attracted passers-by, who joined in on what was being misperceived as "fun." The city council eventually realized that having this giant dance party burn out the afflicted wasn't the best solution to this problem.

Saintly Cessation

 After the failure of the medical attempts, it was believed that a curse had been laid on the city, sent as a warning to repent for their sins or suffer the consequences. Acting like the town in Footloose, the police of medieval Europe liked to run a pretty tight ship to keep the sinners at bay. Gambling houses and brothels were forcibly closed, gathering the people involved in these institutions and banishing them from the city. They even tried to send gifts to the saints by donating a 100-pound candle to the cathedral.

 Furthermore, the town outlawed dancing and playing music in the town, making special exceptions for events like weddings and celebrations. However, similar to their previous attempts, these measures were futile.

 Heeding the advice of the religious, the Privy council appointed men who collected the writhing bodies of the victims of the dancing plague, tied them to wagons while they were still squirming and carted them to the shrine of St Vitus, 25 miles away. St Vitus was a Christian Saint from Sicily who died as a Martyr when he was just a child. Today, he is considered to be the patron saint of artists and epileptics. He is also said to protect people from lightning strikes and animal attacks. Furthermore, when St Vitus was alive, he was known for being able to perform healings by laying his hands on those who were ill, especially those who suffered from conditions of unsteady steps and trembling limbs.

(Source: Wikimedia)

 According to reports, those who were tied to the wagons were untied and released, before they danced their way into the Shrine of St Vitus, falling in front of his image. A mass was set over them and each of the involuntary dancers was given a pair of blessed red shoes, following which they were finally cured. Thus, the phenomena met a saintly ending. The Dancing Plague soon became known as Saint Vitus's dance, either because the saint had cured the dancers or caused the whole thing, punishing people for sinning and not giving him enough attention.

Similar Phenomena

 The Dancing plague, however, was not the first dancing mania that struck Europe. In 1237, roughly a hundred children began dancing in the streets of Erfurt, Germany. They danced all the way to the town of Arnstadt before collapsing from exhaustion. It is believed that this event served as an inspiration for the story of the Pied Piper. The children were returned to their parents following which some of them died shortly after. The surviving ones lived with a tremor that stayed with them for the rest of their lives

 In 1374, a dancing outbreak hit the city of Aachen and quickly spread across the Rhine Valley. Afflicted dancers held hands in a circle and danced for hours together, in wild delirium, until at length they fell to the ground in a state of exhaustion. The town folks considered this to be a standard case of demonic possession. Exorcists were brought in to bathe the dance circles with holy water while shouting incantations in the faces of the possessed. The ailment eventually disappeared, fading away as mysteriously as it had appeared.

 In 1491, a nunnery in the Spanish Netherlands saw several nuns becoming possessed by “devilish familiars”, who compelled them to jump out of trees, race around, and dance while foaming excessively. Over the next two centuries, nuns suddenly plunged into this state of delirium. When exorcism was called, they would proposition the priest who came to perform it.

Theories

 Throughout history, many theories explaining the reason behind these people dancing ceaselessly, sometimes even dancing to their graves, have come to the surface.

Paracelsus’s Theory

 In 1526, around eight years after the strange dancing phenomena had tired itself out, Renaissance physician Paracelsus visited Strasbourg for a post-mortem. According to Paracelsus, forced natural dancing was an involuntary physical response, like a reflex, that could be caused if certain body parts were manipulated. He blamed the women and scrutinized the role of Frau Troffea, citing her as a rebellious woman, who set off a dancing mania in order to avoid doing a house chore or two.

(Source: Wikimedia)

 Paracelsus further claimed that the sufferers were “whores and scoundrels”. He said that they should have been locked in a dark room, given only bread and water until they snapped out of it.

Societal Stress

 Some people believe that societal stress was the cause of the plague. To say things in Strasbourg in 1518 had been pretty bleak would be an understatement. The city suffered from not one, not two, but four serious famines between 1492 and 1511. In 1516, food prices saw a significant rise and in 1517, a fifth famine killed countless people. In 1518, smallpox and leprosy were on the rise, packing the orphanage with at least 300 new orphans.

 Moreover, People of the time believed that happenings were the work of God or the Devil, instilling a fear of possession that drove people insane. Seeing the woman dancing, apparently without any control over her own body, would have caused the people to assume that she was being punished for her sins. The religious guilt that so many people carried could have made them feel as if they deserved to be punished for their sins as well.

 These factors could have been strong enough to break people and cause an outbreak of stress-induced psychogenic movement disorder.

Tarantism

 Before and after 1518, stories of people partaking in these trance-like dances were reported. In 1728, Ana Palazzo, a young south-Italian woman, had been working in the vineyards when she had been bitten by a tarantula. She had collapsed to the ground before being taken to the musicians of the town instead of a doctor.

 A spider was prevalent in local lore and people believed that their bite could cause Tarantata, a condition which could only be healed by the victims dancing themselves to exhaustion. Thus, as music was played, Ana got up and began to dance, tripping for two full days before being healed. Later, when Ana was an older woman, she wrote to a friend, stating that the spiders were haunting her.

 Many physicians from that time documented occurrences of Tarantism. Most of the sufferers were women, who had been bitten by a venomous spider or scorpion. The victims allegedly remained unresponsive, only recovering after they danced long enough for the ailment to cure itself. To add on, the victims would almost become possessed, hearing music and melodies, dragging themselves across the floor and trying to climb up walls the way a spider would. Today, Tarantism is seen to be a form of hysteria.

A Dancing Cult

 Some believe that every single person who grooved in the dancing plague was part of a heretical cult, pre-planning the events before emerging every decade to revel in public.

 The theory, however, fails to connect how the dancing seemed to spread amongst the people, all of whom were in complete agony while many of them died. Moreover, at a time when Europe was on heightened alertness for suspected heretic cult antics, it's unlikely this one simply slipped under the radar.

External Hallucination-Inducing Agents

 Modern scholars believe that people could have consumed tainted wheat, which harbours ergot fungi whose toxic and psychoactive products cause food poisoning. The Ergot fungi produce ergotamine, a psychoactive substance whose structure resembled LSD. Furthermore, LSD was originally synthesized from ergotamine.

 Citing that the phenomenon was restricted to a particular region, some believe that the victims could have had hallucinations like the Oracle of Delphi, also known as the “Pythia”. Modern scientists believe that an earthquake could have created an opening which let out trapped psychoactive gases into the atmosphere, causing Pythia to hallucinate and make her believe that she was talking to Apollo himself. Something similar could have happened in the dancing outbreaks, which predominantly occurred in places near the Rhine and Moselle rivers.

Conclusion

 Modern experts don’t all agree on what exactly caused the Dancing Mania. Were they victims of demonic possession? Were they cursed by God or Saint Vitus? Was the phenomenon a case of hallucination and delirium? Or, was the dancing plague nothing but a mass hysteria? Unfortunately, all we have are questions and no unanimous answer. The dancing plague of 1518 is an anomalous historical occurrence, one that can never be fully explained.