This happened in mid-July 1518. Madame Troffea left the house and began … to dance.
There was no celebration in Strasbourg that day. But the woman danced and danced - without stopping for six days in a row. And on the seventh, 34 dancers performed intricate steps in the narrow streets of the French city …
At first, the city authorities, remembering, apparently, that like is treated with like, decided to improve the health of the dancing townspeople … dancing until you drop. For this, the most spacious hall in the city municipality was allocated for the needs of the sick and musicians were hired.
The "medicine" proved to be ineffective. By the end of August, the number of bouncing townspeople had grown to 400. In brief moments of enlightenment, they cried out for help, said that they did not want to dance at all, but some force seemed to make them spin. Events were taking a nasty turn. Several dozen people died from physical fatigue, from heart attacks and strokes. Conversations with priests, demonstrative prayers also gave nothing.
In the end, the dancers were fooled into carts and taken out of the city out of sight. After that, the epidemic in Strasbourg abruptly subsided and subsided in early September. As for the dancers themselves, their further fate is unknown: it was said that they had been sent to some "healing" place, located not far from the city. However, what really happened to them, no one knows.
WHY?
The many surviving documents of the 16th century - records of doctors, texts of sermons, local chronicles, minutes of city council meetings - do not allow us to doubt that what happened in Strasbourg was by no means a figment of the fantasy of medieval chroniclers.
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"Dance of St. Vitus"- this unusual term is known to many people who have nothing to do with the history of medicine and neurology. Saint Vitus lived in Sicily and was martyred by the Romans in 303 during the persecution of Christians launched by the emperor Diocletian. 1,200 years later - from the 16th century - his name became associated with "dance". Then the belief spread throughout Germany that anyone who danced in front of the statue of St. Vitus on his day of memory (June 15) would be healthy all year. Thousands of people crowded around the statues of the saint on this day, and their dances were often very expansive, emotional. In the end, the St. Vitus dance began to be called the disease, the most striking external manifestation of which is the involuntary movements of the arms, legs, trunk of patients, often resembling a kind of dance. In reality, this ailment is called Sydenham's chorea and is a neurodegenerative hereditary disease of the brain. And alas - neither prayers to Saint Beat, nor dancing in front of his statues bring recovery …
The "dance fever of 1518" was real. And now, for almost five hundred years, it has haunted scientists. Researchers are concerned about one single question: what exactly made people dance until they were completely exhausted?
In particular, Eugene Buckman, author of Religious Dancing in Christianity and Popular Medicine (1952), looked for biological or chemical causes of dance fever. Together with a number of other scientists of the mid-20th century, Buckman was inclined to believe that ergot was to blame for everything - a mold growing on the stems of wet rye. If it gets into the human body together, for example, with bread, it can cause convulsions and hallucinations.
However, this hypothesis has many opponents. Yes, ergot does cause hallucinations and delusions, sometimes even convulsions, but it does not provide the energy needed for a "dance marathon."
According to the theory of Robert Bartholomew, a sociologist at Australia's James Cook University, the tireless dancers were members of some heretical sect and performed an ecstatic dance. But this explanation does not stand up to criticism. If you believe the historical documents, and there is no reason not to believe them, then the unfortunates did not want to dance. Frightened, desperate, they prayed for help, but - alas - no one could ease their suffering. In addition, if the dancers were sectarians, the church would not stand on ceremony with them and would be very quick to accuse them of heresy. However, nothing of the kind happened.
Saint Vitus is not to blame
"A time to dance, a time to die" is the title of John Waller's book, in which he reveals the secret of the "dance fever in Strasbourg." In his opinion, the dance epidemic in the city did not break out by chance. It was preceded by a whole chain of misfortunes and catastrophes that caused unprecedented suffering.
Sudden frosts and heavy hail killed the harvest.
Hunger reigned in Strasbourg. Dozens of people died. To survive, they had to slaughter all farm animals, borrow money and, as a last resort, go out on the streets to beg. Famine was accompanied by epidemics of disease: smallpox, syphilis and leprosy roamed Alsace, claiming hundreds of lives. No wonder that anxiety and fear have settled in the hearts of people.
And as always happens in such situations, the early Christian legend came to my mind very opportunely, which said: "If you annoy Saint Vitus with something, he will send a curse in the form of a dance, which can only be gotten rid of through long prayers." However, the same Saint Vit could, according to legend, bring good health, at least for a year. For this it was necessary to dance in front of his image. And if so, then, it turns out, and one should not be surprised at the appearance of dancers on the streets of Strasbourg …
Professor Waller, however, believes that St. Vitus has nothing to do with dance fever. He puts the blame for what happened on … a phenomenon known as mass psychogenic illness - as doctors call mass hysteria, which is preceded by very strong stress and suffering. John Waller believes that the victims of the dance fever fell into a trance state against their will, and could not get out of it.
MASS Hysteria
The dance fever in Strasbourg was far from the only case of mass psychogenic illness, but the most documented and therefore widely known.
Meanwhile, until 1518, Europe at least 10 times managed to face similar epidemics. For example, in 1374, a dance fever swept across many cities and villages in northeastern France, in what is now Belgium and Luxembourg. And the most recent "dance of death" was recorded in the 1840s in Madagascar. From the descriptions of doctors it is known that "people danced wildly in a trance state, convinced that they were possessed by spirits."
MORE PSYCHOPATHY
The most unusual case of mass psychogenic illness is the Tanganyika epidemic of laughter in 1962.
It all started with some kind of joke at a girls' boarding school in the village of Kashash, located on the western shore of Lake Victoria near the border with Kenya. Episodic fits of laughter, which lasted several minutes, engulfed several schoolgirls. But very quickly, an epidemic of laughter spread throughout the school.
After the school was closed, "the disease was transmitted to the parents of schoolgirls, and then to the rest of the inhabitants, first of Kashash, and after a while, of the surrounding villages."
The victims, mostly female, experienced pain from laughter, sometimes fainted, suffered from rashes, bouts of uncontrolled crying, they had breathing problems … But they could not help laughing! The strange epidemic of laughter ended only after a year and a half.
The most "piquant" hysteria is known as the koro epidemic. From at least 300 BC e. men in all corners of the world have an inexplicable fear of losing … their genitals. All sorts of horrors come to their minds: that their "beauty and pride" will be stolen, that it will dry up, become smaller, shorter, etc. etc. Koro epidemics were especially often observed in Africa and Asia. The last outbreak of coro was recorded in 1967 in Singapore. “The fear of losing their genitals then seized more than a thousand men who tried to protect their manhood with the help of 'armor' made of pegs, clamps and other inconvenient and ineffective devices.
Zakhar RADOV