Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Dancing Plague of 1518

Episode Date: October 10, 2021

People who love to dance are said to have dancing fever. Dancing fever is just a phrase and not something meant to be taken literally. However, could there really be an actual dancing fever? Could there be a disease that caused people, many people, to dance until they fell from exhaustion? Well, maybe. Learn more about the Straussberg Dancing Plague of 1518 on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

People who love to dance are said to have dancing fever. Dancing fever is, of course, just a phrase and not meant to be taken literally. However, could there actually be a dancing fever? Could there be a disease that caused people, many people actually, to dance until they fell from exhaustion? Well, maybe. Learn more about the Strasbourg dancing plague of 1518 on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Do you ever climb into bed ready to sleep only to have your mind start racing the moment your head hits the pillow? Thoughts bouncing around, replaying the day, or jumping ahead to tomorrow.

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In 1845, the Danish author Hans Christian Anderson published a fairy tale called The Red Shoes. In his story, a vain young girl puts on a pair of red shoes that were cursed. Once she starts dancing, she's unable to stop. An angel appears and tells her that she can't stop dancing, and even when she dies, the shoes will continue dancing with her inside them. Then, as is pretty typical for fairy tales, she gets her feet cut off and then dies. By the way, there is an excellent film adaptation. of the story, which was released in 1948, by the British director's Michael Powell and

Emerick Pressburger. I highly recommend watching it if you haven't already seen it. The fairy tale of the red shoes wasn't totally fabricated out of nothing, however. There had been stories for hundreds of years in Europe of people, and sometimes many people, who would dance until they collapsed. This condition went by many different names, including Dancing Mania, the Dancing Plague, Choreomania, St. John's Dance, and St. Vitus' Dance. The bouts of dancing mania would affect children and adults, men and women, and they primarily occurred between the 13th century and the early 17th centuries, all in Europe. Even though it sounds like it might be something totally fabricated, these instances of dance mania were very well documented. They happened enough times, in enough places, to enough people that it was known to be an actual thing.

One of the first recorded instances of dance mania occurred in the 7th century, but little is known about it. it beyond the fact that it happened. Sometime around the year 10-20, there was a case of 18 people who began spontaneously dancing around a church during a Christmas Eve service in Bernberg, Germany. There was a 13th century outbreak with a group of children who were traveling between the cities of Erfurt and Arnstadt in what is today Germany. They danced the entire 20-kilometer distance, and it should be noted that this occurred very close to the time that the story of the Pied Piper of Hamlin came out, which has a very simple sense. similar theme. One of the largest and most famous outbreaks of dance mania occurred on June 24th,

1374 in the town of Aachen, Germany. Starting with just a small number of dancers, it eventually took over thousands of people, and it spread to nearby cities in a region such as Cologne, Franconia, Metz, Strasbourg, and Utrecht. I have to stress that these outbursts of dancing were not like people getting up to dance at a music festival. They would start dancing, and then they wouldn't stop. The dancing could go on for hours in some people, and for others it would go on for days or even weeks. Some people wouldn't stop until they dropped from exhaustion, or in some cases, even death. The dancers were often reported to be in a state of unconsciousness and that they couldn't control themselves. Over the decades, these outbreaks of dance mania would periodically show up,

and they would almost always occur in an area around what is today, Western Germany. The best known case of the dancing plague, and the case that this episode is titled after, occurred in the year 1518 in the city of Strasbourg. From the accounts we have, it all started with a single woman named Frautropha. I should note that Straussberg is in France today, but it was part of the Holy Roman Empire at the time, and it was predominantly German-speaking back then. From Froufah, other young women joined in the dancing, and it eventually kept expanding. It began in July, and it just kept spreading. Eventually, the town magistrate and the bishop got involved trying to control all of the dancing. It wasn't until September that the dancing plague eventually died out in Strasbourg.

Episodes of dancing mania would continue to break out for several more decades before completely disappearing in the early 17th century. While the stories of these manic dancing bouts are interesting, the big question is, what caused this? What caused various, mostly dramatic towns and cities, to suddenly differentiate. develop widespread cases of people dancing uncontrollably until the point of exhaustion. The original explanation was, not surprisingly, supernatural. However, the diagnosis was often quite different depending on who was doing the diagnosing. Some thought that the dancing was the result of demonic possession, and there were mass exorcisms performed on some of the dancers. However, some thought that the dancing was the result of divine intervention from one of the saints.

I mentioned before that the condition was also called the St. John's dance, or the St. John's dance, or the St. Vitus' dance. It was believed that St. John the Baptist or St. Vitus were responsible for the dancing. In particular, St. Vitus had the power to curse sinners with the compulsion to dance. Contemporary attempts at trying to explain dancing mania have gone beyond the supernatural, but they are also not anywhere united in their diagnosis. One hypothesis is that this is one of the earliest documented cases of mass hysteria. Cases of mass hysteria are quite rare, and this might have been such an example. It could have been stressed-induced. The first cases appeared soon after the Black Death, and other cases may have been brought about from periods of famine or

disease. Once word of the first cases were spread, they existed in the back of people's minds, allowing it to spring up. Another theory is that these were actually organized events. They weren't in fact spontaneous events at all, but planned by the participants who took part. The only problem with this theory is that most contemporary accounts indicated that the people involved did this involuntarily. Perhaps the most interesting explanation as to what happened was that it was due to poisoning. In particular, a strain of fungus known as the ergot fungi. The ergot fungi grows on damp grains such as wheat and rye which are commonly consumed in baked goods.

Within the ergot fungi is the chemical ergotamine, which is structurally very similar to the chemical called lysurgic acid diethylamine, commonly known as LSD. In fact, LSD was first synthesized from Ergotamine. Long story short, people were basically tripping. However, this theory doesn't explain how people were able to dance for so many days. What we know about the effects of psychotropic drugs doesn't fit the facts. Even a geographic explanation is hard to make fit the facts. While the majority of the dancing mania cases occurred along the Rhine and Mosul rivers,

there were also some cases in Italy and Spain. So the truth is we really don't know what caused these cases of the dancing plague. Any theory which explains it would also have to explain why it stopped. I personally lean towards the mass hysteria explanation. We've seen fads and other social trends before in history, and this might just be an example of that. It wouldn't require anything chemical or supernatural to explain how it happened. So the next time you hear a song that references dancing fever or dancing the night away,

remember that there were people in history who took that very literally. The associate producers of Everything Everywhere Daily are Peter Bennett and Thor Thompson. If you'd like to support the show, please join the list of patrons over at patreon.com. And also remember, if you leave a review or send me a question, you two can have it read on the show.