This Podcast Will Kill You - Ep 40 Dancing Plague: Worst Dance Party Ever

Episode Date: December 24, 2019

In 1518 a strange sight could be seen all over the town of Strasbourg. Crowds of people dancing unceasingly, unable to control their movements, seemingly heedless of their blistered and bloodied feet. As the contagious dance grew, so did the body count as the frenzied dancers succumbed to exhaustion. Over 500 years later, this dancing plague leaves us with many questions, first among them being, “What in the heck?”. In this episode, we try to get to the bottom of this mysterious infectious dance by investigating several different hypotheses, which lead us down some wild roads. Tune in, put on your best dancing shoes, and drop that beat. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is exactly right. There are already enough things charging your card every month. Dinner should not be one of them, which is exactly why Blue Apron is now subscription-free. You heard that right, Blue Apron no longer requires a subscription. You can order meals when you want them and skip when you don't without adding another recurring charge. Blue Apron meals are designed by chefs and arrive with pre-portioned ingredients, so there's no meal planning and no extra grocery trip. Order now at Blue Apron.com. Get 50% off your first two orders plus free shipping with code this podcast 50.

Terms and Conditions Apply. Visit blueapron.com slash terms for more information. This is Bethany Frankel from Just Be with Bethany Frankel. Listen, I have a bone to pick with these dog food brands calling themselves fresh, natural, healthy. Sounds great, but a lot of these quote-unquote fresh dog foods in your fridge are not even 100% human grade, which is why feed your babies just food for dogs. It's good enough for big and smalls, my precious babies, so it's good enough for your babies. 100% human grade, real ingredients, beef, sweet potatoes, green beans, delicious.

These are foods that you would want to eat. Not that the babies would ever share. Just Food for Dogs is the number one bet recommended fresh dog food back by over a decade of research. No marketing fluff. My dogs lose their minds at dinner. They run to the bowl, tags wagging, paws tapping, full Broadway performance every single night. So I do care about the food I feed big and smalls. So go to just food for dogs.com for 50% off your first box, no code, no gimmicks, just real fresh food.

With the all new Audi Q3, the answer is always yes. Yes to adventure. Yes to escape. Yes to right now. The all new Audi Q3 made for the yes life. It was a week before the Holy Festival of Mary Magdalene on July 14th, 15th. In 2018, that Frau Trofea began her dance. One can picture her in the shadows of one of Straussburg's half-timbered houses,

white linen cap limp with sweat and her skirt and apron swaying as she jumped awkwardly from foot to foot. Despite pleas from her husband to desist, Frau Trafea went on dancing into the evening in front of a crowd growing all the time in size and bewilderment. As the shadows of buildings and onlookers lengthened and she could barely raise her limbs, frau trafea collapsed into sleep. The repose only lasted until she had recouped enough energy to restart her dance. Early the next day, she resumed. Frow Trafea went on dancing for a third and then a fourth day. At this point, the authorities intervened. She danced interminably, apparently heedless of the terrible bruises, bloody sores, and lacerations that must have formed on her feet after so many days of near constant movement.

We don't know what Froufia thought or what she said while she danced. whether she screamed for help or maintained a troubled silence. We can be fairly sure, though, that she was in genuine distress. So spooky. So that is from the book called The Dancing Plague by John Waller, and that's the subject of this episode of this podcast will kill you. Yep, yep, yep. Hi, I'm Erin Welsh. And I'm Aaron Alvin Updike.

Welcome. I'm so excited for today's episode. I know. I've been like barely able to contain myself. It's really exciting. I mean, we've been wanting to do another medical mystery type thing since encephalitis lethargica. Yep. But, and so I'm really excited to do this because a lot of people have asked us about it or like sent us email saying, hey, have you read this?

Have you heard of this? Yeah. Which, okay, let me tell you, I have to tell you the thing that I'm, there's several things that I'm most excited to talk about. But one is the fact that, so we're doing the format of this differently than our. normal episodes. It'll be more similar to the format of our encephalitis lethargic episode, but even a little different than that, I feel like. Just join us for the ride. Yeah, it's going to be great. But, Erin, I know absolutely nothing about the dancing plague. Oh, really? Like, I had never, ever heard of it until you, you suggested this a very long time ago. And then we've had a lot of

people, you know, message us like, hey, can you do the dancing play? Can you do the dancing plague? I know literally nothing about it. And I was so careful. Like you told me the hypotheses to research. So that's what I researched. And I was very careful to never Google anything to do with the dancing plague. Oh, good. Oh, good.

This is going to be a very interesting episode. It's going to be so fun because I have these things that I researched that I'm like, I have no idea how this ties in. I can make some guesses based on the fact that it's called a. dancing plague. But like, oh my gosh. I just can't wait to hear all about this and then just do some hypothesizing with you. Yes. Okay. So to ease this conversation along, should we pour ourselves a quarantini? A quarantini? I think we ought to. Okay. This week's quarantini is called boogie fever. Of course. And it has tequila. The dancing juice. Yep. It has

guava juice because it's pretty and tasty it has lime juice sparkling water mint and then garnish it with a flower because it looks pretty why not yeah it's also delicious so we will post the full recipe for that quarantini as well as our non-alcoholic placebo rita on our website this podcast will kill you dot com and all of our social media channels so make sure you check those out perfect And we have new merch if you haven't seen our awesome water bottles. They are very, very cool. And new smelling soap, which smells so good. Yeah, check it out.

And our shirts should be stocked at this point. Yeah. Yeah. If not now, very soon. I think in January, yeah. Yep. Okay. So, oh, we got some gifts from people, but I haven't opened them.

Yeah. Open them because it's Christmas. Oh, okay. Oh, my God. Okay, so Kimberly Baxter sent us these adorable little knit microbes. Oh my gosh, that's right. She knitted little H1N1s. Yeah, they're little swine blue. They're so cute. And the little beads are H's and ends. Oh, my gosh. Oh, thank you, Kimberly. They're so, so adorable.

And then also, this is a long belated, but Nick Davis sent us an amazing box. full of quarantine supplies and a customized quarantini. That's incredible. It's so incredible. Thank you so much. We're thrilled. We haven't been in the same place to drink it together yet, but rest assured, we will. Yes, absolutely.

So thank you so much. Thanks, Kimberly. You're too nice to us. Best Christmas ever. Yeah. Oh, okay, I think that's all of our business now. Excellent. I guess we should jump right in.

Yes. Let's dance right in. Oh, dancing, dancing, dancing. Should we take a quick break first? Let's do it. Dinner shows up every night, whether you're prepared for it or not. And with Blue Apron, you won't need to panic order takeout again. Blue Apron meals are designed by chefs and arrive with pre-portioned ingredients so there's no meal planning and no extra grocery trip.

There, assemble and bake meals take about five minutes of hands-on prep. Just spread the pre-chopped ingredients on a sheet pan, put it in. in the oven, and that's it. And if there's truly no time to cook, dish by Blue Apron meals are fully prepared. Just heat them in the oven or microwave, and dinner is ready. And here's the exciting news. Blue Apron no longer requires a subscription. You can order meals when you want them and skip when you don't without adding another recurring charge. Order now at blueapron.com. Get 50% off your first two orders plus free shipping with code this podcast 50. Terms and conditions apply. Visit blue apron.com slash terms for more information.

Anyone who works long hours knows the routine. Wash, sanitize, repeat. By the end of the day, your hands feel like they've been through something. That's why O'Keefe's Working Hands hand cream is such a relief. It's a concentrated hand cream that is specifically designed to relieve extremely dry, cracked hands caused by constant hand washing and harsh conditions. Working hands creates a protective layer on the skin that locks in moisture. It's non-greasy, unscented, and absorbs quickly.

A little goes a long way. Moisturization that lasts up to 48 hours. It's made for people whose hands take a beating at work, from health care and food service to salon, lab, and caregiving environments. It's been relied on for decades by people who wash their hands constantly or work in harsh conditions because it actually works. O'Keefs is my hand cream of choice in these dry Colorado winters when it feels like my skin is always on the verge of cracking.

It keeps them soft and smooth, no matter how harsh it is outside. We're offering our listeners 15% off their first order of O'Keefs. Just visit O'Keefscom slash this podcast and code this podcast at checkout. A timeless wardrobe starts with pieces that are built well from the beginning. From the fabrics to the fit, everything needs to last beyond one season. And that's how Quince approaches design. Quince has all the staples covered, from 100% organic cotton sweaters to premium denim made with stretch for all-day comfort and luxe cotton cashmere blends, perfect for the changing seasons.

The quality shows in every detail, the stitching, the fit, the fabrics. Every piece is thoughtfully designed to be your new wardrobe essential, and each piece is made with premium materials in ethical trusted factories and priced far below what other luxury brands charge. I recently got a pair of Quince's Bella stretch wide-leg jeans, and they are now in constant rotation. They are so comfortable. The fit is amazing, and they come in a bunch of different washes, so I'm about to go order some more.

Refresh your wardrobe with Quince. Go to quince.com slash this podcast to get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns, now available in Canada too. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E dot com slash this podcast to get free shipping and 365-day returns. Quince.com slash this podcast. Okay. So you heard from our firsthand account a little bit about the 1518 dancing plague in Strasbourg. But there's so much more to tell. So let's pick up where we

left off in the beginning. Okay. But before I start, I want to say that this story you're about to hear almost certainly happened. Like the events, the baseline events, really did happen, no matter how bizarre it sounds. Okay. But what's less clear and the point of our episode today is why it happened. Right. Like what the heck? happened to make this happen. What's going on? Okay, so let's set the stage a little bit. So Strasbourg is in present-day France, sitting close to the German border.

Back then, it was part of the Holy Roman Empire. Okay. And it looks really lovely in pictures. It's like a little close to the mountains. Maybe we should add it to our TBWKY vacation destinations. Ooh, yeah, let's. And the dancing plague that we're going to focus on, because spoilers, it's not the only one, is the one that happened in 1518 in this town.

Okay. What were the early 1500s like in Strasbourg? Probably dirty and smelly like everywhere? Exactly. Grim. Just really grim. Yeah. As you may remember from our syphilis episode, that disease by this point was sweeping Europe. So like the late 1400s, early 1500s is when it kind of went everywhere.

Okay. Plague, like the actual bubonic plague, would swoop in every few decades to carry off some proportion of the population. Wow. And then what goes better with plague and disease and syphilis than famine. Of course. Death was around every corner. And to deal with this constant threat of death, many people turn to religion. Because science as an explanation for things that happened to you wasn't really happening yet.

Like it wasn't invoked yet. Yeah. And at this time, the religion that dominated this region was a super fiery demon-fearing Bible-beard. Christianity with a very stark hierarchy. So if you were part of the clergy, you held the power and the answers and the wealth. And the people like peasants and so on, they turn to the church for guidance. And they would do this especially so during trying times, which is like all the time in the 1500s. Yeah. Okay. So what was going on in Strasbourg around this time specifically? In 1514, there was a terrible winter that frosted and blunted the crops and led to many people just straight up freezing to death.

Oh my gosh. And then two years later, a horrible harvest and another bitter winter led not just to people dying of freezing to death, but also a huge amount of resentment and unease. Resentment particularly towards the church. So prices for grain had more than doubled over the past few years, and people were getting resentments. of the church's demands for tithes and fees and whatnot. And there were active rebellions, actually, to try to overthrow the church or the clergy, which is kind of interesting. But none of them succeeded.

All right. So then in 1517, which is the year before the dancing plague, that year was dubbed by one chronicler as simply the bad year. So imagine this one year in the sea of bad years. So it was very bad. Very bad. there was malnutrition, starvation, smallpox epidemic, the English sweat. So the sweating sickness, which is another historical medical mystery. We touched on it a bit in the Hanta virus episode. Yeah. But we didn't really go too much into it. So that would dominate the region in Strasbourg that in 1518 or 1517. So needless to say, many people in Strasbourg had their faith severely shaken, kind of felt they were being punished for something. Okay. So now we arrive. in 1518 Strasbourg. Things don't look so great, even though it's July in probably gorgeous weather, except it

wasn't. It was unbearably hot. It was like very hot and very dry. So when Frau Trafea started her dance, rumors of the devil's involvement circulated, but they were quickly overruled by the majority who believed that her uncontrollable dancing resulted from like a divine retribution. So a punishment for faithlessness and immoral behavior. and sin and blah, blah, blah.

And so a lot of this... It had to do with God, but it wasn't demonic possession specifically. Right. Okay. Right. So it was more of like, this is, you are being punished by God. Okay. And this was probably fortunate in a way that it wasn't viewed as being satanic or

demonic possession because then she would probably have been burnt at the stake or something. Oh, okay. Yeah. And so under this punishment, Frow Traffey had danced for six days nonstop, basically, only to sleep and then kept dancing and dancing against her husband's wishes and insistence. And it's funny because like the first chronicler that really came, the first well-known chronicler that wrote a lot about the dancing plague came to Strasbourg, I think around seven, six or seven years, or no, seven or eight

years after 1518. And it was, his name was Paracelsus. And I've talked about him before as like a medical historian chronicler. And he hated women. And so it's really like very interesting. He's like, oh, well, these women are just dancing because they're like loose women and loose morals and blah, blah, blah, blah. They won't listen to their husbands.

Exactly. He was like, oh, she only started dancing to infuriate her husband. So whatever. Anyway, as Frau Trafea danced, more and more people arrived to gawk at her. And then, as I said in the first hand, the medical authorities intervened. And what that meant was that she was ruled to be sent to Severn, Severn, Severn, which is like a nearby place in the mountains, where there was a shrine

to St. Vitus. And the other name that was given to this dancing plague besides choreomania, choreo from like dance, choreography and stuff. And mania meaning like, yeah. Whoa. Uh-huh. All right. This is St. Vitus' dance. Okay. So who was St. Vitus?

And why would our dancing queen be sent to his shrine? Okay. So St. Vitus was a Sicilian martyr who didn't die after being burned in a cauldron of lead and tar or after being attacked by lions. And he didn't succumb to the temptations of a bunch of seductive dancers to go back to Roman gods. Sorry. He was burned in a cauldron of lead and he didn't die. Uh-huh. Okay. I mean, it was like the year 300, so.

Okay, okay, okay. Citation needed, no. He was a super popular saint, actually. People prayed to him to be healed from epilepsy and also people struggling to conceive. Back then, people viewed saints not just as being able to heal them of various things, but also as having the power to inflict punishment in sort of the opposite way that they would heal. So if St. Vitus could cure epilepsy, he could also cause it. Oh, interesting.

So St. Vitis somehow became associated with these outbreaks of spontaneous, uncontrollable dancing sometime during the 1400s. And the only way to stop the dancing was to go to his shrine and ask for help or be ordered to the shrine. And so that's how Froufetraffia found herself there. Unfortunately, we have no idea what happened to her after that. and in all likelihood she stopped dancing and returned exhausted to Straussburg. But whatever happened to her was overshadowed by what was happening all across the town,

which was that people had started to dance. At first, it was just dozens of people. This frenzied sort of like it was actually dancing. Like it was described as dance. Huh. And they would move to music in a circle. until they dropped basically.

Like they would dance from as soon as they woke up to as soon as they, to when they just collapsed from exhaustion. So they're not just like flicking about their dancing. Right. They're actually dancing. Okay.

Frow Trafea being the first one happened in mid-July and then within a month it had turned to hundreds of people. Okay. By the end of the plague, around 400 people had this uncontrollable dancing. This is in a town of 20,000, which is like not a small amount. No, that's, I mean, 400 people in a town of anything is a lot to be dancing.

And they, like, they, according to chroniclers, did not want to be dancing. They did not want to be dancing. So a lot of chroniclers describe them as sort of being in like a trans-like state or at least that's our modern interpretation of it. Okay. Like their minds were lost to them is sort of what would have been described. And they, it's not like they were like, they weren't entirely lucid, it appears. Right. Okay.

Yeah. Oh my gosh. This is so bizarre. It's so bizarre. And not everyone escaped. Like not everyone would just dance and dance and then get tired and stop. Like this was a relentless entranced dancing that people could not seem to stop no matter how much they wanted to or how much they were threatened with fines or losing their dignity. Can I ask a question?

Yes, of course. And you might be answering this, but I need to just know this now. Were they all dancing together? Was it like one? So frau Trophy started this. And then the next person were they in. the same vicinity as her? How did the next people start? And then was it like 400 people all in the same area that were dancing? Was it one giant dance party that no one wanted to be a part of?

I mean, kind of yes, actually, to the one giant dance party. So I don't know exactly, and I don't know if it's in any chronicles exactly how the next people got started. But it just sort of like more people started to dance. And so at the very beginning, it was viewed as, you know, a medical condition, which is kind of interesting because they, when they referred to it, they used the word for plague rather than the word for curse, which would have implied like a spiritual condition. Yeah. And the town council or what was in effect of the town council, they decided, okay, this is a

medical condition, we're going to treat it medically. And they treated it with like, like needs like or something. Oh, so like let's dance you more? They constructed a wooden stage. They hired you. musicians, they brought in dancers, and they were like, just keep dancing. Just get it out of your system. Stop it. Are you serious? I'm serious. And then they're like, oh, my God. I get it. You just need to dance it out. Just we'll make it happen. I mean, I kind of like that attitude. Just like

dance it. Just come on. I can relate to needing to dance it out. Absolutely relate. But pretty soon, like within a few days, they're like, oh no, oh no, this is bad. This is not what we should have done. Like more people were joining in. More people were dancing. And then people started to die. People died. People died.

People died. Yes. Oh, my gosh, Erin. So at the, there was one, it's hard to say exactly how many people died. but one chronicler wrote that at the peak of the epidemic, 15 people died every day. What? And so that that has to be an exaggeration because the plague affected around 400 people. And so if it every day, that would imply multiple days, that would be like hundreds of people dying.

Yeah, how long did this whole thing last? Around two months. Two months? That's like at least, what, 60? No, 15. I can't do that math, Aaron. 15 times 60. That's a lot of people. Like, not everyone who dance died for sure. Right. Yeah. And so another person just wrote, many people died. Okay. So, and I think that, like, if you're in the 1500s and you're a chronicler and you say many people died and you've seen things like plague and smallpox, it's a lot of people.

Yeah. Okay. So, well, we don't know. Yeah. So then after. it became pretty clear that hiring musicians and constructing a dance hall and like encouraging this was not going to work and actually was causing more problems. And this was all happening because the first person, she was kind of in like a town square type area. It sounded like like everyone came to watch her. Yeah, she was dancing outside. Like she was visible dancing, public dancing. Yeah. Public dancing. And then everyone like other people, this all started. And then they were like, well, let's cure this by having a giant dance party. So then they brought in all these things.

And then it just kept escalating from there. Yes. Okay. Just making sure I understand. Ooh, this is good, Aaron. I mean, and these are like people who didn't look like they were enjoying themselves. Like they had blister, bloody feet. They were sweaty.

Rory Gilmore wasn't enjoying herself at the end of the 24-hour dance-a-thon either, but. She wasn't. And there are a lot of parallels with that and this. So welcome on the same. episode of this podcast will kill you Gilmore Girls edition. The, um, it is sort of like, it's really funny, uh, that there are a lot of comparisons made between these like dance plagues and like rave culture and the dance marathons of, especially like the early 1900s or the first half of the, I did a dance marathon.

UCLA dance marathon. Yeah. Did you last? Yeah, I did. It was great. Okay. I enjoyed it a lot. My little brother came.

We all did it. It was so fun. So after. obviously this wasn't working, this public dancing. They were like, the town was like, okay, we've made a huge mistake. And we are now outlong dancing. And if you are seen publicly dancing, you'll be fined. And so it was just sort of like, we're going to try the opposite now. Okay. And that didn't really work either. Shocking. People still dance. People were still being infected by this dancing craze, whatever. And so

eventually they resorted to shuttling people either by wagon or by like, or on, foot to the shrine to St. Vitus in the mountains, which is around 30 miles away. Okay. And it kind of seemed to work. Like there at St. Vitus, they were prayed over. They were given red shoes. Like there was like some strange order for like a bunch of red shoes. Dorothy.

Dorothy and Snow White and blah, blah, blah. Like it's a very, yeah, there was something about the color red that was associated with like dancing, uncontrolled dancing. and this like fervor. I don't know. All right. Anyway. And so, yeah, it kind of, like this is kind of an abrupt end, but basically they went to the shrine.

They, most people were covered. But the trauma, you know, stayed with them for a long time and for the people that had to witness this. And it didn't really fade into memory. People made drawings. They made paintings. They wrote stories. And, you know, we're still talking about it today.

Huh. And I think, you know, that brings me. me to you because we're still talking about it because it seems like such a bizarre event. And it's hard to envision people having uncontrolled dancing until they died. Yes. And there have been several different hypotheses as to what caused this. And we'll talk about them all. There's ergot poisoning, conversion disorder, mass hysteria, and probably a couple others

that I'm sure you're going to tell me about. So let's hear it from you, Erin. Tell me about these things. Let's solve this mystery. All right. What we'll do is we'll take a quick break and then we'll go through each of these hypotheses one at a time and we can debate them. Does that sound good? Perfect.

Love it. Okay. So, Aaron, you had told me to research some specific things, right? Yes. These specific hypotheses. The ones that I'm going to tell you what you told me to research. Ergotism. Okay, which is ergot poisoning. We'll talk about it.

Encephalitis, which like, I'm just going to say right now it's not that. Yeah. Okay. We can briefly talk about that. Also, mass hysteria, which is a terrible term, but we'll talk about that. And Sindhan, Korea. We can talk about that as well. So those are the four. I know I can tell, based on my research, 100% what the only thing that this could even possibly be. Yeah.

Okay. But let's go through these one at a time, starting with the absolute least likely, okay? That sounds fun. Sounds excellent. Okay, the most least likely, is that a good way to say it? I think it would just be the least likely. The least likely is encephalitis. Yeah.

we've talked about encephalitis before. It is such a ridiculously broad term, first of all, to just say encephalitis that I was like, I don't even have anything to research. I don't have any sources for you on encephalitis because it's not a single disease. Encephalitis means swelling of the brain. Most of the time, it's viral, but tons of different things can cause it. So you can absolutely have symptoms that include seizures. That's the closest thing I can think of that might be something like

dancing plague, like uncontrolled movement. Yeah. Other than that, it's like headache, fever, vomiting, stiff neck, maybe hallucinations, etc., etc. So yeah, it's absolutely not encephalitis. We cool. Get it out of here. We should have a buzzer sound. We should. Hypothesis one. Meh. Two thumbs down. All right. Hypothesis two, that it's definitely. We could. We should. We should. I guess. meh two thumbs down all right hypothesis two that it's definitely not uh sindhan korea or korea you could say it both ways so do you know what this is erin only that only the in the the korea aspect of it okay so the term korea and it was really interesting when you said choreography because i don't know i think i knew that a long time ago but i didn't remember that to make the connection

the connection. I think I'm having too much fun. So the term Korea, it generally just means in large involuntary movements of usually the limbs, but also the facial muscles. Right. So Huntington disease is also characterized by Korea. Sindenham Korea is a specific form of Korea that happens as a result, like following a strep throat infection, a group A strep throat. infection. Interesting. It's not entirely clear exactly what causes it, but it's pretty clear that similar to rheumatic fever and rheumatic heart disease, it's a result of antibodies that you make

following this strep infection that then go on to infect your brain. But why just this type? So it's thought that it infects your brain stem. And so your brain stem has a lot to do with motor control and movement. And it's just by Strep Type A? Group A Strep. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Group A Strep. And Group A Strep, like, there's a lot of auto-antibodies that get made. That's why you also get rheumatic fever, rheumatic heart disease.

Now there's thoughts that there could be something called Pandus, but that's pretty controversial at this point. So, yeah, there's definitely a lot of auto-antibodies that get made, that can get made, if you have a strep infection that's untreated. Gotcha. Yeah. So that's why when you like, especially because kids get strep throat like all the time. Yeah.

It's really important to go get that diagnosed and treated because you can prevent all of these future complications if it's treated for the most part. Gotcha. So was this the dancing plague? Two thumbs down. Highly doubtful based on. It sounds like most of the people that were involved were adults, correct? They seem to be adults. I think they were largely women.

Okay. That's the only... But it does seem to be like all age groups, though. I'm going to put an asterisk in that, what you just said, mostly women. Okay. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Okay. Yeah. So that's then very highly unlikely. Also because what it sounds like you're saying is there were coordinated-type movements. It wasn't just irregular type sort of nonsensical movements. Right? No. It was dance.

Like it seemed to be structured. Like they used different terms to describe epilepsy than they used to describe dance, for instance. Right. Okay. So, Sindenham, Korea. Okay. We've already very, very quickly eliminated two of these hypotheses. I mean, yeah, it's pretty, yeah.

Okay. So then, ergotism. Yes. We're going to spend some time on this because I did a ton of research on this. Okay, good, because I have a huge section on this, too. Oh, great. Okay, so let's talk about what ergot is. Ergot is a fungus, kind of. It's a group of fungi, kind of. What?

It's a little bit weird and complicated. So when people talk about ergot, especially in the context of ergotism or ergot poisoning, they're talking specifically, for the most part, about a fungus called claviseps perpurea. Yeah. This is a fungus that infects rye. It's actually a parasitic fungus. It grows into the rye, like the ovum of the rye flower, and then replaces the kernel. Oh, cool. So this clavisps fungus produces this little nugget within that flower that replaces like a kernel of rye, for example. So the ergot part of it is kind of that specific kernel.

But then ergot is also a term used to refer to that whole group of fungi. So it's a little bit weird. Okay. Does that make sense? Yeah. But for this episode, we'll talk about ergot meaning the fungus. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. Okay. We're not going to talk in depth about the life cycle. It's very interesting. It's a plant parasite. So that's kind of the important part that you need to know. And the other thing is that ergot produces a ton of alkaloids. We've talked about alkaloids a lot in some of our crossover episodes with Matt Kandaius of In Defensive Plants because alkaloids are organic compounds.

So that means they are carbon-based compounds that have basic nitrogen attached, nitrogen atoms attached to it, that are really commonly produced by plants, bacteria, fungi, etc. These tend to be defensive compounds that plants and fungi produce. Okay. And in the case of ergot, they produce a bunch of different kinds of alkaloids. There are a couple, Ergonavine, which is also called Ergometrine. Don't ask me why. Okay. Actually, I'll tell you why.

It's because it was discovered in multiple places at the same time, and they called it two different things. Classic. Classic. So Ergonavine or agamatrine, and then also ergotamine. Those are kind of the two biggest ones. or the most common ones, but there's a whole bunch of different alkaloids that are produced by Ergot. And it turns out that these are rather similar in structure, and therefore in our bodies

tend to have actions at serotonin receptors in our bodies. Okay. Okay. Most people have probably at least heard of the word serotonin, I'm guessing. It gets a lot of press because it's called like the happy hormone sometimes. So a lot of antidepressant medications, their action is to increase the amount of serotonin in your brain. So serotonin is an important neurotransmitter. It does a lot of things in your brain.

We don't really understand all of them. But they also, importantly, there are serotonin receptors in other places than just your brain and central nervous system. There are serotonin receptors in your gut. In fact, a lot of serotonin is produced in your gut. Interesting. In your uterus, which is very important, and I can't wait to tell you about it. Oh, my gosh. And your smooth muscle in other places like your blood vessels and things like that.

Okay. I want to know. I have so many questions, but I'm just going to wait because I don't. Erin? Yeah. Okay. Here's the other thing I was so excited about for this episode. I knew you were going to have so many questions.

And my notes are so disorganized, but I have like 16 sections where I just have asterisk with here's a question Aaron's probably going to ask and then the answer for it. I'm so predictable. I love it. It's so good. Okay, so it's important to also know that dopamine, serotonin, histamine, all these things are kind of, they can sometimes cross-react on the same receptors. And so the ergot alkaloids can also react on a number of different receptors, not just the very specific serotonin in your brain receptors. Cool? Okay. Okay. So that's the ergot alkaloids. They act on serotonin type receptors. I have a few side notes here because I got very excited when researching this. Because we actually

use ergot alkaloids, specifically ergonavine and ergotamine. Ergotamine. Ergonovine. and ergotamine, we use them medically in two main areas. Erganavine, I'm on my Obiegein rotation right now. We just talked about Ergonavine. The day before I was researching ergot alkaloids for this episode. Stars aligning. I know. It's so exciting. It's like I was doing work I was supposed to be doing. So one of the main things that we use Ergonavine for is to improve or control postpartum hemorrhage because it turns out that there's so many of those receptors in the uterus, Ergonavine attaches very strongly to those receptors and causes uterine contraction and increased muscle tone of the uterus. Really? What? Yeah. I know. Isn't that fascinating? How did anyone

even figure that out? I don't know. But so Ergot has been used like throughout history for like uterine type. No. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Throughout. history? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Toots. Okay. Then there's also ergatamine, which is the other most common alkaloid. That is used commonly today for the treatment and prevention of migraines. So migraines, a lot of treatment for migraines, it's thought that migraines have to do with like vasodilation in the brain and increasing pressure in your brain blood vessels. So you treat it with vasoconstrictors that kind of specifically target those blood vessels in your head. And that can reduce. And it can actually like abort migraines if you get it early enough.

Really? And so ergotamine is one of the drugs that we can use for like prevention and treatment of migraines. That's amazing. I know. Also medically, not medically, but recreationally, LSD. Yes. is very similar in structure to the ergot alkaloids. Right. So all of these ergot alkaloids have what's called the lysurgic acid backbone. That's the name of like the main structure of all these alkaloids. LSD is lysurgic acid diethelamide.

Okay. So that's LSD. Yeah. So it's not produced naturally by ergot. LSD is a synthetic derivative of lycergic acid. Yeah. But if you think about the fact that. LSD causes like massive hallucinations, right?

Like huge amount of hallucinetic effect. So it's not unreasonable to think that poisoning by ergot can cause hallucinations because we know that LSD can cause that and it's not that different in form or structure from LSD. Right. And because we're talking about a fungus that grows on a plant, we know from all of our crossovers with Matt, that the ratios and amounts of these different types of alkaloids is going to differ a lot between and among different individual fungi and different strains of the fungus or the plant that it's growing on.

Right. Because it's going to also depend largely on the environment in which it's grown, how many of these alkaloids they produce, what specific types of alkaloids and in what ratios. Okay. Cool. So that's kind of ergot, like an overall picture of ergot and its alkyloids. how they're used today. So what happens if you get ergot poisoning? Yeah. Okay. So when one ingests ergot infected rye, rye is the most common grain that ergot infects, but it can also infect like

rice, other grasses. It can infect a lot of different monocots. There are three main syndromes that you can get from ergot poisoning. Most of the literature says two, but more recent literature divides it into three. Okay. Gangrenous, ergotism. Gangrenous ergotism. Gengrene is like, if you imagine your limb turning black and then falling off. That's gangrene. Entero ergotic. Entero meaning your gut. So you can have a form of ergotism that's more specific just to gastrointestinal symptoms. Okay. And convulsive ergotism. Right. So the gut makes sense.

and the convulsive makes sense, why does it cause gangrene? Is that one of the questions? No, but we'll talk about it. That's one of the things I will of course explain. So remember I said that one of the uses of the ergot alkaloid is for vasoconstriction in your brain. Okay, so we know that ergot alkaloids can cause vasoconstriction. Oh, gotcha. If you have vaso-alcolyde, constriction in the small vessels of your limbs that can lead to necrosis, which is tissue death, which necrosis on a large scale is what gangrene is. It's a death of a large amount of tissue. With or without, you can, once that tissue starts dying, it's very easy to get a superimposed bacterial infection on top of that. So gangrenous ergotism can become so severe that you can lose entire limbs. Entire limbs or parts of limbs will die.

to the point where if you just hit them, they will fall off completely. Oh my God. With very little bleeding at the site where the tissue kind of falls off from because all that tissue is also dead. That's horrifying. Yeah, it's really gnarly. So gangrenous ergotism is also called St. Anthony's fire. Because it's not just a chill process of your limb slowly dying. Like, oh, no big deal.

It's just slowly. Not that, okay, that's obviously a massively huge deal, but it's also not like a painless process. Right. This is also associated with very intense neuropathic pain, so nerve type pain, these violent burning pains that shoot through your limbs. Yeah. And back when, first of all, we didn't, they didn't know exactly what caused ergotism or how to prevent it from infecting grains and how to like separate it from the rye. and back in medieval Europe, they used rye for everything, right? Right.

Like all their bread was made of rye. Everything was made of rye. So apparently this form, gangrenous ergotism, was so common and had such specific symptoms that that's why it got its own name, St. Anthony's fire. Uh-huh. Yeah. So I think that's pretty interesting. Yeah. Yeah.

I have a little bit about St. Anthony and the whole thing. Oh. Oh, cool. Okay. So then let's talk about the convention. convulsive form of ergotism. This is most likely more what people were thinking when they thought the dancing plague might be associated with ergotism, right? Right. Because it wasn't like people were dancing and then legs were falling. Well, maybe legs were falling off. They weren't, though. So that's

something that's like, I'll talk a little bit about sort of the evidence pro and against or whatever, but in terms of contemporary accounts. But yeah, there isn't, there doesn't seem to be like, oh, so-and-so's like fell off. Yeah. It's just the more of the convulsive thing, but do you know the proportion of gangreness versus convulsive? This was one of the questions. So not just what is the proportion, but what determines whether you get gangreness or convulsive form? Right. Is it different strains are more prone to some? We have absolutely no idea, quite honestly, is what it seems like. I read something, though, that, or I read something that was like strains that are east of, like in Eastern Europe tend to be more convulsive in West as gangrenous. In the past in Germany, people west of the Rhine river usually got gangrenous ergotism. East of the Rhine, they tended to get convulsive.

So it's been suggested that it might be due to chemical differences in the different strains of fungus. But there's been at least one study that showed that that wasn't the case. Like there isn't that big of a difference in the chemical composition of the alkaloids to specifically explain that. Someone else had suggested it might be concommonant vitamin A deficiency. So if you're also vitamin A deficient, then you would be more likely to get the convulsive form. But that also doesn't seem to hold water either. It's not entirely clear. What's interesting is that within an outbreak, like especially in more recent outbreaks, it's often the case.

that some people will get gangrenous and some people will get convulsive, but it's very rare for someone to get both gangrenous and convulsive at the same time. But even within the same outbreak, you don't have interesting. Yeah. So my guess would be it probably does have a lot to do with the combination of alkaloids, but it might not be as easy to separate like this strain versus that strain. It might just be very environmentally dependent. Like growing in this type of environment, you might be more likely to get this combination of alkaloids, et cetera, but then it also probably has to do with individual susceptibility. So there's probably some combination effect going on. So with the convulsive type, I will say that you often also get GI effects. So nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, this is really

common, especially early on in convulsive ergotism. But then you will get more of that neuropathic, like pins and needle sensations. What's really common is something called formication. Ooh. What's that mean? Not fornication. So that's the sensation that ants are crawling underneath your skin. Oh my gosh. Like form, like, okay. Yeah, like the family name for ants. Yeah. Okay. Then you'll also get like small muscle twitches, large muscle spasms, convulsions. You can get whole body spasms, etc, etc. You can also get, hallucinations, dementia, delirium, mania, it can be really bad. So that's ergotism. What do you think, Aaron? Okay. So there are a couple things I want to talk about. Because I knew that ergotism was

one of the things, and I didn't know anything about it except that it was caused by a fungus and in rye flour. So, but there has been a lot of discussion about whether ergotism was the cause of dancing plague. Yeah. And okay, so let's go through some of the things. So first of all, there's this, that convulsive ergotism can cause these like jerky movements and whatever convulsions and so on. But that's not how you would describe dance.

Like that's not. Not at all. And so the fact that they very clearly use the words for dance and dancing indicates probably not ergotism. Right. Secondly, ergot poisoning, as you said, doesn't affect every person in the same way. Yeah. And it's not entirely predictive. Like you, it come, and some people could cause, like you said, these hallucinations and some people could be just having diarrhea.

So, urgid poisoning, yeah, it could cause hallucinations and maybe convulsions looking like dancing in an individual, but not 400 people. Yeah. Well, yeah. And it's not going to be called dancing by any stretch. No, it's not going to be called dancing. And then the other thing is that people, knew about ergot poisoning. Like they knew what it was. It had been written about from, I think the first instance had been written about in 857, like the year 8757. And even around the area, there were like where the rye flower went through pipes to be packed into bags. At the end of the pipes were these like horribly distorted faces that had been put there. As a reminder, like historians think now it might be a reminder of the hallucinations that ergot poisoning can give you. Fascinating. And

And so it's called St. Anthony's fire, like who is St. Anthony? So it was this Catholic order of monks that were really talented at healing people who had the holy fire. And it probably was because they just left and had other sources of food. Yeah. Yeah. Most people, it's surprising that even people who had like very severe convulsive ergotism, the mortality rate was only 10 to 20%, which is really low when you consider that at that time there was absolutely no true. treatment essentially. Right. And it's cumulative, right? Yeah, it can be. Absolutely. Okay. So, okay. So the fourth thing is that urgut poisoning can cause some of the symptoms, maybe that were described with the dancing plague, but it wouldn't give you the energy to dance on end for days after days to the point of death. Definitely not. Your extremities makes them numb, maybe, or would restrict your ability to move or dance. Yeah, yeah, for sure. So it's probably not urgett poisoning. I say definitely two thumbs down. Two thumbs down. But we're not entirely done with the discussion of ergotism if that's okay.

No, we're not. Okay, good. Because are you going to talk about what I think, what I'm going to talk about? I'm ready to talk about what I know you're going to talk about. The Salem Witch Trials? Absolutely. Yeah. Amazing.

I think I might have read the same paper as you when I was looking through your sources. 1976 by Caporeal. Yeah. Okay. So, yeah. So this episode, we wanted to focus on the dancing plague, but you can't really talk about ergot poisoning without talking about the Salem Witch trials. You can't.

Because that's like one of the modern explanations for what was going on. All right. Do you know, well, I guess now that since you read that paper, you know more about the Salem Witch trials. I know a little bit. I knew almost nothing except like, yes, the Salem Witch Trials happened. Yeah, same. I thought for like as a kid, I thought for the longest time that it was in Salem, Oregon. So that's where they happened.

I still have this like very sense like this sense of Salem, Oregon being like a very spooky haunted place. It probably is. I don't know. Who knows? Let us know. But so for you all out there listening, who may know just as much as we did before we started this episode about the Salem Witch Trials, let's just, you know, give you some background.

Okay. Yeah. So the Salem Witch Trials took place in 1692 to 1693 in Salem, Massachusetts, not Oregon. And so in the early 16th. the population there consisted mostly of these super religious people, pilgrims who had come to North America for religious freedom or whatever, but this brand of religion was pretty extreme. And so, but over the next hundred years, as the area became more and more populated, the population of the merchant class grew and the merchant class being like lighter on the religious side of things.

So anyway, what all of these things led to be is that in the late 1800s in Salem, it was a pretty fractious town. There was a huge divide religiously, politically, and there was a lot of infighting in this town. I think quarrelsome was one word I saw used to describe it. So neighbors were always fighting with neighbors over property lines or who didn't go to church that week. And there was always gossip and petty revenge being enacted. Oh. And then there was witchcraft, which was this sort of, it was like assumed to be a real thing. It was not an uncommon accusation. And it was just part of the religious aspect, like not necessarily witchcraft itself, but like, you know, communing with the devil and whatever else. Okay. So do you know around 100,000 people are thought to have been put

to death for practicing witchcraft? A hundred thousand? Uh-huh. Around 100,000 people in Europe. I had no idea. It was that high. It was really high. And so this literal witch hunt had more or less died out in Europe by the mid-1600s and in part due to the scientific revolution. but Salem was a bit behind the times. Okay, so here we are in this quarrelsome town that firmly believes in witchcraft and is full of a bunch of people with a lot of time on their hands

and petty revenge that they wanted to carry out. So it started when several young girls accused three women, Tituba, a slave from the West Indies, Sarah Good, a poor woman who didn't go to church, and Sarah Osborne, who also didn't go to church. And she had also remarried an indentured servant. So anyway, these women did not have a lot of standing in the community.

So the accusers claimed that the invisible spirit of the witch would pinch, choke, prick with pins, and bite them, also causing them to thrash and writhe about. And the number of afflicted girls in a few days increased, as did the number of accusations, until I saw somewhere there were over 150 witches accused. Yeah, that's what... 78% of them were women, by the way. Oh, shocking. Uh-huh.

And then trials went about, as you would expect. if you confessed, you were pretty much fined and released or let off with light punishment, but if you maintained your innocence, you were executed. That's so interesting to me. If you're like, yeah, yeah, I did it. I'm a witch. They're like, all right, stop doing it. And if you're like, no, really, I'm not a witch.

They're like, we're going to burn you at the stake. That's really, I did not know that until reading this. It's really strange. Also, no one was burned at the stake. 19 people were hanged. One person was pressed to death, like crushed. Okay, that's horrible. Yep.

And five people died in jail while awaiting trial. So how come you think of witches as being burned at the stake? Probably because they were in Europe and other places. Oh, okay. Also in the U.S., but who knows. Okay, so that's the very short version. There's a lot of really fun reading out there, really interesting reading out there where you could get a lot more information.

Yeah. Okay, but where does ergotism come into play? Yeah. So in this 1976 paper by Linda Caporeal, there was published in science, she proposed that ergotism was the reason for the symptoms of the afflicted girls. So the twitching, the choking sensation, the pinprick feeling, hallucinations. And these all kind of fit in fairly nicely with how ergotism acts on someone. They do. And then there's the fact that ergotism had been known in Europe for hundreds of years, but there was no evidence that it was

known to occur in North America at this time. It wasn't until the early 1800s that it was referred to in writing. So it could have been just not written about, but known. Whatever. Then she also points out in this paper, the climate conditions. So like really good for fungal growth, warm, damp summers, whatever. Spatial pattern kind of fits. I don't know. I was less convinced by that in terms of like which households were affected. Okay. And then there's the abrupt ending of the whole event. Like it was just sort of one day it was just like, and then it's over. no more afflictions. So what do you think? Are you convinced? Did you read the reply to the 1976 paper? Oh, no. I didn't see that there was a reply. Oh, yeah, I'll tell you about it.

Okay. I mean, I was absolutely not a thousand percent convinced. I don't think that I would ever be convinced about something that is so difficult to try and actually pinpoint. Yeah. But it was a very interesting idea, and I like the idea that someone is trying to put an explanation. I got to be honest, I didn't know that during the Salem witch trials, it started with like girls who had these symptoms that then accused other people of being witches that did those symptoms to them. Right. That I didn't realize that aspect of the story. And so I think thinking about those initial cases being cases of ergotism. Yeah, okay, maybe.

Maybe. But, you know, it's a little weird that like nobody else then would have had symptoms. If it was a really bad year for ergot, then how come like there wasn't more like any men who had symptoms or other people in those same households that had symptoms if it was a geographical thing. So it's kind of like, okay, it's fun to. theorize. It's a fun hypothesis. Yeah. And so I read this reply to this paper, which was like, here is a pro side. Here is a negating every single point that the 1976 paper made. Okay. And so the two authors, Spanos and Gottlieb, talked about how they talked about the gangreness and the convulsive form. And then they talked about the hypothesis that vitamin A deficiency usually is present

when the convulsive form appears, and Salem was not likely to be a place where vitamin A deficiency happened. So there was ample fish and cows. There was also no mention of any gangrene during this time. And the age structure of those who were afflicted doesn't match either. So convulsive ergotism happens mainly in young children, apparently.

But only three of the 11 afflicted girls were under 15 years old, and I think one was under 10. Yeah. And you would expect, like, you said, more small children or more people to have convulsions? Or even more of like people who work with RISE. So like bakers, things like that, people who are like being more exposed like constantly to, I would kind of think maybe that those people would have had some kind of symptoms as well. Right. And then like, you know, the 1976 paper makes this point about or tries to make the spatial

argument that like, oh, in this household and this household. But really it wasn't a household-wide affliction. Yeah, it wasn't. It was just like girls in those particular houses. Right. Yeah. A couple other people who then have refuted this reply or whatever have said, oh, people have different susceptibilities to ergotism. True. Different strains of the fungus might be like play a role here. And so I mean, I think overall like what it seems is that it's like just like you said, it's a fun hypothesis, but it's probably not that well supported. Yeah. Yeah. That's how I would feel about it. I would say that ergotism is a better fit for the Salem witch trials than it is for dancing plague. Oh, for sure.

To get back on that track. Also, so real quick, though, back on Salem, I saw one of the hypotheses somewhere for the Salem witch trials was, or for these afflictions, was encephalitis lethargicca transcarried by birds. What? Yeah, and there was no, like, citation at the end of this for me to, like, read more about it. But like, what? Encephalitis, lethargica carried by birds? A hundred percent makes no sense. No.

But that was not, they weren't saying, this is what I proposed. They were saying this is one of the hypotheses. That is really weird. Isn't it? Yep. Well, so let's get back on the track of Dancing Plague. That was a fun little aside. Yeah.

There was a long little aside. It was, but it was good. Now we don't have to do a whole episode on the Salem Witch Child. Yep. Bye, bye. So, dancing play, ergotism? Which, what's funny is because, again, I knew nothing about dancing plague before this. And I, so when I was researching this, I was like, yeah, maybe it was ergotism.

You can have a lot of spasms. But I had no idea that dancing Blake was like literally people dancing on a town hall stage until they dropped. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, no. Definitely not. Okay. We should take a quick break, I think, before our last hypothesis. So the last hypothesis we've already mentioned is, of course, in air quotes, mass hysteria. Yeah. What's a better term for this? Because that's what I saw a lot of the places. Mass psychogenic illness is one of them. Also, let me find the exact terminology for it. outbreaks of multiple unexplained symptoms.

That's a mouthful. It's a very broad term. Yeah. So let's start right there, actually. The term mass hysteria is a terrible, terrible term. It's simultaneously very othering. Anything when you refer to something as mass blah, blah, blah illness. Like it's very like, oh, those people, the masses, you know, which is problematic.

in a lot of ways. But the word hysteria... Hysteria has roots. Yep. This is a thing we'll do a whole episode on someday. Oh, for sure. So if you are unaware, the term hysteria comes from a Greek term that meant womb, like the root, H-Y-S-T-R-H-T-R-H-T-R-H-T-R-H-T-R-E-M is from a Greek term for womb, which is why we still call a uterine removal surgery a hysterectomy.

So hysteria used to be thought to be. something that only happened to people with uteruses. And it was the result of a wandering uterus. The wandering uterus. Can that be our like band name? Yes, 100%. Is there not already a ban called the wandering, the wandering uteri? There's got to be. Oh, yeah. So for a very long time, this was used as an excuse to brush off and explain away any potential pain, issues, emotions, anything that a person with a womb might have, it's like, oh, they've got hysteria. They must be hysterical. So, yeah, that is a terrible term.

Well, maybe Frow Trafea just had a dancing uterus. Maybe she had a dancing uterus. She just couldn't contain herself. So, yeah, what's also really interesting is that, so, you know, when I was trying to research this, I was Googling on Google Scholar, Mass Hysteria, of course, because that's what it was called. And it's really infuriating how many relatively recent papers still exist using that terminology. But if you want to find more information about it, the most common term I found was mass psychogenic illness or mass psychogenic response. It's still kind of not a great

term, quite honestly. Right? It's not perfect. It still is using that these masses of people. we don't know very much about psychogenic illnesses. So a psychogenic illness is a term that's used to mean any number of either what's called somatoform or dissociative disorders. So either disorders where you have, it's thought that you have psychiatric stressors of some kind that cause actual somatic or bodily symptoms. That's a somatiform disorder. and then dissociative disorders, which are disorders where, again, psychiatric stressors cause a change in consciousness or identity of some kind. So like a fugue state, that's a dissociative disorder.

So that's kind of what that term a psychogenic illness means. So first of all, at some point, people have tried to separate mass psychogenic illness into two types. you have mass like panic and then you have mass like motor disorders. Right. Yeah. Okay. And then other people have tried to be like, no, it's actually one in the same. So I don't know the consensus.

If there's something I know less than biochem, it's psych quite honestly. So sorry in advance. I'm not sure where the consensus lies at this point, whether mass psychogenic illness is two separate like mass panic versus mass motor psychogenic illness. But in this case, either way, we're talking more about motor symptoms, right? Yes, there was probably panic going on. But what we're really talking about is a bunch of people that are having physical symptoms, not uncontrolled dancing that they don't want to be doing. These are voluntary movements in the that they are voluntary muscle groups moving, but they are involuntary movements in that the person

does not want for them to happen and feels that they are not in control of them happening. Right. So that is actually, if that happens in an individual, it's often called a conversion disorder. So to talk about mass psychogenic illness in this instance, we actually have to also talk about conversion disorder. Yes. This is fascinating. It really is.

And again, I apologize that I'm probably not doing a super great job of it because psych is not my strong suit. But conversion disorder is unexplained bodily symptoms, usually neurologic symptoms, but also, I mean, anxiety type symptoms have often like neurologic components as well. But they can also have things like vomiting, diarrhea. A lot of times conversion disorder are neurologic things like muscle twitching, movements, facial twitches, twitches that are not associated with any underlying medically known disease. You do all kinds of like EEGs, which is looking at your brain waves. You do EKGs to look at your heart. You can do tests on your on your muscles to look at like nerve conduction and you find that everything you can test for is normal. But this person still has like a twitch or a something that you absolutely cannot

explain, that might be called a conversion disorder. Generally, you also have to have some kind of psychiatric stressor associated with it. So a lot of times it might be past traumas or things like that, some kind of outside stressor that might be causing this that is associated with this conversion disorder. Not just like, you know, someone who has absolutely no, no one has no stress in their life, but, you know. Right. Okay. So the thing about mass psychogenic illness is that there have been a lot of instances of it where things have been diagnosed and called mass psychogenic illness. A lot of times these happen in schools or in workplaces. Are you going to talk about the laughing epidemic? No, I wasn't going to actually talk about any epidemics. Oh.

What's the laughing epidemic? Oh, it's a laughing plague. So in 1962, in Tanzania near Lake Tanganyika at a mission school, several girls started laughing uncontrollably. And then it was also interspersed with crying. And this became highly contagious. And soon 95 of the 159 students could not stop laughing. So they shut down the school because it was just like, you couldn't do anything. Yeah. And then this created more of a problem. As the, as everyone went home, the students went

home and, or they went to their hometowns, and then there they spread the laughter as well. So by the end of this epidemic, several hundred cases of uncontrolled laughter were reported over like a few months or something. Well, that's fun. But there's also like other dancing plagues. And so I think that's really interested. There's also, there have been cases also of contagious fainting? Maybe that was one of the ones that you talked about in schools as well. Yeah, a lot of it in schools is things like fainting, passing out. There was cases in, the one of the things that I did read about was actually very recently in Australia following HPV vaccination. There was a series of girls that all got very nauseous, dizzy. Some of them

fainted, some went to the hospital. Nothing was wrong with any of them. But every single one of those girls was trotted out through a central quad where everyone could see them as they got taken to the nurse's office. So this is a really important part of mass psychogenic illness. And it's why I was asking you how this first started after Frau Trafea began dancing because they tend to, well, they do spread by sight and like visual and auditory type stimulation. So it's either people seeing directly something happened to someone or hearing this is happening to everyone in this place or in some cases smell as well smell do you have any instances of smell there've been a lot of cases where someone for example in a school a teacher came in and smelled gas she said i smell gas

and then she started getting nauseous dizzy lightheaded and then throughout the whole school there was they've done tons of testing they found absolutely nothing no gas no no toxins in the environment gas leaks of any kind, but a bunch of students in that school, including the teacher, they all got dizzy, nauseous. There was vomiting everywhere, things like that. Interesting. Yeah. So it can often start with a single smell. So that's another thing about this idea of mass quote-unquote hysteria or mass psychogenic illness is it tends to occur in women. Yes. So. So one of the big. issues with calling something mass psychogenic illness is that you really have to rule out that there's not

anything else happening, right? Right. Because any type of psychiatric disorder, especially a conversion disorder, you have to rule out, you can't just call it conversion disorder because you don't, you don't know as a physician what's going on with somebody. Right. Just because you don't know doesn't mean there's not something going on. And very importantly, it doesn't make the symptoms any less real. Absolutely. And it doesn't make, like, let's say, so you, you're saying that a lot of these conversion disorders and are a lot of cases of conversion disorder and a lot of instances of mass psychogenic illness happen when there's extreme trauma around a situation. And so that's why I spent a lot of time at the beginning talking about the years leading up to the 1518 outbreak and why I

talked a little bit about Salem and stuff like this is that these. You can't just discount, like, you're like, oh, well, whatever, that mass hysteria was just caused because whatever, a bunch of people were, got crazy. They were crazy. Yeah. Right. And it's like, no, there was this extremely traumatic events. There's this extremely important cultural context and historical context that you have to consider

when these are happening. And it's so, it does seem very dismissive when it's just like, oh, mass psychogenic illness. Yeah, the othering of it is a very good point, I think, that you made. Yeah. So it is very difficult. But at the same time, what's difficult, too, is when you have a situation where, you know, you don't want mass panic. And if there isn't anything happening, like, for example, in the case of the HPV vaccine after that incident, there have been many, many studies and before and since that incident to make sure that there really wasn't anything going on with that vaccine. Yeah. But you don't want people to then not vaccinate because they're worried about this side effect of vaccination that actually had nothing to do with the vaccine itself. It really was a psychogenic response. So the question, too, can, like, the other thing is in this first person who had it, so in Frau Trafea, did she have something like a medically diagnosable illness that caused her to,

be acting in this way that then became a psychogenic mass psychogenic response in the general population. And this is something we can see happening often in things like real gas outbreaks or like neurotoxin exposures where you have maybe a release of some toxic gas in an area that really does have an effect on people. And then in surrounding areas kind of expanding from that, you can have it amplified by this mass psychogenic response. So then it's even harder to differentiate what people really need this, like, medical care because they were exposed to something versus people who need medical care, but it's not going to be the same medical care because they weren't actually exposed to

anything that are causing the symptoms that they have. Right. Right? It's really complicated. That is really complicated. So I want to talk about something that I found very cool about mass. mass psychogenic response. Ooh, okay.

That was trying to explain why, the pathophysiology of why mass psychogenic response happens. Okay. Oh, this is, this is so cool. This is a very human reason pathophysiologically. And I'm not saying this is the absolute reason, but this paper was very interesting. So this paper suggested that mirror neurons are involved in a mass psychogenic response. Oh. Okay, let's talk about mirror neurons. Have you heard of these? Mm-hmm. Okay. So mirror neurons are these neurons in your brain that, so in my brain, when I see someone doing something, these mirror neurons in my brain activate the same region in my brain that's activated in your brain by whatever you're doing. Okay, so a concrete example of this. If you, a, Aaron are scratching your nose.

Scratch your nose. Scratch. A certain part of your brain, the nose scratch region, is activated while you scratch your nose. When I see you scratch your nose, the mirror neurons in my brain activate my nose scratch region. That's wild. I know. But like, does this happen? Like, we're friends.

We're friends. Does this happen to strangers? Oh, great question. As far as I know, absolutely. Yeah. Okay. It's suggested that this mirror neuron system is involved in a lot of our higher order functions like imitation, which is something that's really important for learning and also for social behavior. Right? Imitation is something that we do very naturally. A lot of times you don't even realize that you're doing it. But if you're with a group of people, like people start to sort of imitate unconsciously what other people in that group are doing. Yeah. But it's also very likely that there's inhibition on this system because we don't go around imitating absolutely everything that we see, right? That would be socially unacceptable and weird if you did that, right? Okay. So I want to go through some of this paper's hypotheses that they lay out in support of why mirror neurons might be involved in mass psychogenic illness.

One of them, first of all, is that the features. features of mass psychogenic illness, very commonly, like I said already, they spread these symptoms by sight or by sound or oral communication. That is often the way that mirror neurons also function. Both visual and auditory stimulation have been implicated in mirror neuron stimulation. So if I said to you, I'm scratching my nose, we all are scratching our nose over here, then your nose neurons would scratch? Maybe, got to be honest, I don't know a lot about mirror neurons. I really don't.

Okay. So, also, in addition to motor imitation, which we know mirror neurons are involved in, so scratching your nose, etc., it's also suggested that mirror neurons play a role in emotional cognition. So the tendency to catch emotions of other people and be able to recognize emotions in other people. that empathy plus. Yeah. But mirror neurons might kind of like help us get empathy, essentially, right? Access empathy.

That's very interesting. So it's possible that mass psychogenic response might be this kind of emotional contagion, where you're seeing this emotion of other people and that's causing that same type of response in you, especially in the case of something like panic, right? If other people are panicking, you're really. more likely to panic, right? Well, and that's also like a, that seems like it would be an evolutionarily favored response. Absolutely.

Although it's how I ended up in therapy. So other people's anxiety giving me anxiety. Anyways, yeah. So overall, that's kind of like a very bare bones look at mass psychogenic illness. What do we think, Aaron? Dancing plague? I mean, I think mass psychogenic illness. It's the only thing that seems.

from a medical perspective possible. I think what's really important to keep in mind whenever you're thinking about something like any psychogenic illness is that it doesn't make the symptoms any less real. Just because we can't identify what it is medically or somatically that's causing that illness, just because it's your maybe outside stressors

that are manifesting in this bodily symptoms It doesn't make those symptoms any less real. And that's so, so important. These people suffered and died in cases. Yeah. And it might just be, you know, it's not something that we can explain with like a disease or an illness or a malnutrition or anything like that. But our brains are incredibly, incredibly powerful. It's amazing.

It's incredible. Yeah. Yeah. So, okay. Oh, this was so fun, Aaron. This was really fun. I had a really good time. Me too.

More medical mystery. What's next? Yeah. We'll find another one. Yeah. We'll come up with more or send us more. Yeah. If you know of medical mysteries, we will add them to our list.

Yes. Awesome. Okay. Now sources time? Sources. All right. I already mentioned the dancing plague book by John Waller. I also read a little bit of a book called Keeping Together in Time, which is about sort of like

the anthropological history of dance by William McNeil. Cool. And then a few papers that that 1976 caporeal paper. about ergotism, and then the reply by Spanos and Gottlieb, a couple other papers about dancing plague, and I will post all of these on the website. I have a number of very cool articles about ergotism, several on mass psychogenic illness, and a few resources if you'd like to look more into Sindhenham, Korea. I'd like to give a special shout out to a paper by Lee on the history of Ergot Rye from antiquity to 1900

and another more recent one by Belser-Ehrlich about ergotism since 1900 and there are several other on ergotism and then that paper on mass psychogenic illness and mirror neurons was by Lee et all in 2010. We will post all of these sources and a few more that we didn't mention

on our website where you can find them at this podcast, We'll Kill You, you.com. Thank you so much to Bloodmobile for providing the music for this episode and all of our episodes. And thank you to you, listeners, for listening to our podcast and allowing us to make this because it's really fun and we really enjoy doing it. I hope you had fun with this episode. It was so fun for us. Yeah. Okay. Well, until next time, wash your hands. You filthy animals. This is Bethany Frankel from Just Be with Bethany Frankel. Listen, I I have a bone to pick with these dog food brands calling themselves fresh, natural, healthy.

Sounds great, but a lot of these quote-unquote fresh dog foods in your fridge are not even 100% human grade, which is why feed your babies, just food for dogs. It's good enough for big and smalls, my precious babies, so it's good enough for your babies. 100% human grade, real ingredients, beef, sweet potatoes, green beans, delicious. These are foods that you would want to eat, not that the babies would ever share. Just Food for Dogs is the number one Bet recommended fresh dog food back by over a decade of research. No marketing

fluff. My dogs lose their minds at dinner. They run to the bowl, tags wagging, paws tapping, full Broadway performance every single night. So I do care about the food I feed big and smalls. So go to just food for dogs.com for

50% off your first box, no code, no gimmicks, just real fresh food. Truck month is going on now at your local ram dealer. Hurry in for great deals and exceptional offers on a powerful selection of ram trucks. And right now purchase and get 0% financing for 60 months on 2026 RAM 1500 Bighorn and Laramie models. Don't miss this great offer. See your local RAM dealer.

Not compatible with any other offers. 0% APR financing for 60 months equals 1667 per month per 1,000 financed for well-qualified buyers through Stalantus financial services regardless of down payment. Not all customers will qualify. Contact dealer for details. Offer ends 3-2. Virgin Voyages presents with love from Alaska. The scenery out here is unreal. Mountains, glaciers, waterfalls, the ship?

Designed for panoramic views, which is why I'm pretending to be a wildlife photographer. I am not. Yesterday we were hiking and kayaking. Today, I'm watching for humpback whales. Anyway, wish you were here. Award-winning kid-free Alaskan cruises from Virgin Voyages with immersive shore excursions and zero kid energy. Virgin Voyages.com.