In July 1518, in Strasbourg, France, a woman named Frau Troffea took to the streets and began to perform dance steps, which lasted several days. By the end of the first week, 34 local residents had joined her. Then the crowd of dancing grew to 400 participants, according to the Discovery TV channel about a reliably recorded historical episode, which was called the "dancing plague" or "the epidemic of 1518"
Then the authorities considered that the only way to heal the martyred dancers was to continue the dance, but by the end of summer, dozens of the dancers had died from heart attacks, strokes and simply from exhaustion.
After many unsuccessful attempts to uncover the background of this unusual phenomenon, only now the historian John Waller, professor at the University of Michigan and author of the book "A Time to Dance, A Time to Die: The Extraordinary History of the Dancing Plague of 1518," has managed to unravel the mystery that has occupied the minds of scientists for so long. An article on this topic is published by Endeavor magazine.
These people, Waller writes, "did not just shake, shudder, or convulse as if they were in a trance, their legs and arms moved as if they were purposefully performing dance moves."
Eugene Beckman, author of Religious Dancing in the Christian Church and in Popular Medicine, as early as 1952, drew attention to the biological or chemical causes of such dance mania. He, like other experts, believed that at the background of such mass phenomena lay spores of mold that formed in stacks of wet rye that got with bread.
Yes, Waller agrees, mold like this can cause eerie convulsions and hallucinations, but "not coordinated movements that can last for days."
In addition, the researcher insists, there is absolutely no evidence that the dancers wanted to dance. Moreover, they experienced despair and fear.
Hendrik Hondius the Younger (1573-1610). Three women struck by the dancing plague. Engraving based on pencil sketch by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Photo: John Waller | Discovery.com The "dance epidemics", meanwhile, were preceded by some not quite ordinary phenomena - the country was tormented by hunger caused by a series of cold winters and dry hot summer seasons, frost, severe hail. All this took place on the eve of manic dances. Many people died of hunger. Those who survived were forced to kill their pets, then go into debt and, as a result, found themselves on the street begging.
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The region was also affected by diseases such as smallpox, syphilis, leprosy and a new attack called "English sweat".
As a result, Waller points out, fear and anxiety swept across the region.
One of these fears, originating in a religious legend, was that if this or that person invokes the curse of St. Vitus, the Sicilian martyr of the beginning of the 4th century, canonized by the church, he will be able to send down on people in the form of inexplicable attacks of dance - "the dance of the saint Vita ".
Waller believes that it is the phenomenon known as "mass psychogenic illness," a form of mass hysteria usually preceded by unbearable levels of psychological stress, that causes such "dance epidemics."
Victims, the scientist explains, often fall into a state of involuntary trance, which is fueled by psychological stress and the expectation of a transition to an imposed state: "thus, in groups of people who are faced with severe social or economic turmoil, trance can be extremely contagious."
In the areas around Strasbourg, at least seven outbreaks of "dance epidemics" are known in the Middle Ages.
In modern history, there is a case on the island of Madagascar, where in the 1840s the inhabitants, according to medical chronicles, "danced wildly, being in a state of trance, convinced that their souls were possessed by evil spirits."
In 1962, another outbreak of psychogenic illness was observed - the 1962 epidemic of laughter in the Lake Tanganyika area. It happened like this: an ordinary joke caused uncontrollable laughter among the students of a boarding school in Tanzania. The laughter went on and on, lasted for days. The victims, almost all of them female, then began to experience pain and suffocation, fainting, rashes and bouts of crying. And all this had a direct bearing on hysterical laughter, proving the old truth that laughter can be contagious.
From schoolgirls, the epidemic then spread to their parents, as well as to other schools and surrounding communities.
It took a year and a half before the emidemia exhausted itself.
There have been cases of irrational behavior of men, fearing that their genitals might be abducted, or fatally "go into the body." Similar panic moods have been noted in various parts of the world since 300 BC, especially in Africa and Asia. They are known as koro.
The most recent epidemic covered Singapore in 1967, when over 1,000 local men resorted to all sorts of tricks - they used props, or clothespins, just to protect themselves and prevent the loss of such a valuable organ and, in general, male dignity.
Such epidemics, especially those deeply rooted in history, Waller believes, are of great historical significance. For example, the "dance epidemic" speaks of the extreme belief of the people of the late Middle Ages in supernatural forces. It also testifies to what extreme manifestations can lead people to fear and lack of rational perception of reality.
As the scientist thinks, there is little in the world that can so clearly indicate the extraordinary potential of the human brain.