Five outbreaks of mysterious mental illness that swept through entire cities or villages and then disappeared.
1. Medieval dance plague
In 1374, dozens of villages along the Rhine were seized by a fatal disease - the dance plague, or, scientifically, choreaomania (or St. Vitus dance). Hundreds of people on the streets were jumping and making knees to listen to nobody (except, probably, the dancers themselves) inaudible music. They barely ate or slept, sometimes for days in a row, until their blood-shattered feet refused to hold them.
And then the plague stopped - almost as suddenly as it began.
The next outbreak occurred in Strasbourg in 1518, when a woman named Frau Troffea suddenly went outside, began to dance and could not stop for several days. Within a week, 34 more people joined her, and by the end of the month the number of dancers had increased to 400. Dozens of people fell and died from heart attacks, strokes or exhaustion. And in this case, the disease went away just as suddenly.
Scientists of all stripes have tried to find an explanation for this mystery. For a while, the most likely explanation was that people were poisoned by bread infected with ergot, a fungus that grows on damp rye stalks. When ingested, it causes convulsions, fever and delusional states.
History professor John Waller from the University of Michigan disagrees with this version - in both cases it was about dancing, not about seizures. Another popular theory that the victims became part of a dance cult also struck Waller as unconvincing.
Promotional video:
Professor Waller proposed his theory: these were massive psychogenic (trauma-related) diseases caused by fear and depression. Both outbreaks were preceded by famine, crop failure, floods - what could be regarded as signs of an impending biblical catastrophe. Horror in front of the supernatural could lead people into a kind of trance state.
In addition, the dancing plague was associated with the name of St. Vitus, a Christian martyr, dancing in front of whose statue, according to legend, one could gain health. That is, the idea of dancing for the sake of salvation was already in people's heads. All that was needed was one person to start this marathon.
The Strasbourg outbreak was not the last - in 1840, something similar happened in Madagascar.
2. Epidemic of laughter in Tanganyika in 1962
This nightmare began on January 30, 1962, with an ordinary joke. Three female students at a girls' school in Tanganyika started laughing and could not stop. Soon 95 schoolgirls were laughing. The scale of the epidemic turned out to be quite serious, and the school had to be closed for two months.
Laughter was replaced by sobs, accompanied by attacks of fear and, in some cases, outbursts of aggression. These symptoms spread rapidly throughout the school (possibly through contact with an infected person), and could last from a few hours to 16 days.
The school was closed in March when the number of infected reached 95 of the 159 students in the school. 10 days after the closure, a new outbreak occurred - in one of the neighboring villages. Several girls from the closed school were from this village and apparently brought the infection home. As a result, from April to May, 217 people became victims of the mysterious epidemic in this village.
All the victims were mentally healthy people. They had no fever, no seizures, and nothing unusual was found in their blood. Theories about the effect of a certain psychotropic fungus in the absence of other symptoms did not come true. The riddle remains unsolved to this day.
3. Dromomania, or pathological tourism
Most of us enjoy a change of scenery from time to time. But there are also those who, once starting, are no longer able to return to a sedentary lifestyle. An epidemic of dromomania or uncontrollable wanderlust swept France from 1886-1909.
The man who served as a model for dromomania for the European medical establishment was a gas fitter from Bordeaux named Jean-Albert Dada. In 1886, after returning from his truly epic journey, he was admitted to the Hospital de Sant Andre. The man was, of course, emaciated to the extreme, but this is not so bad - he was in a daze, he could not remember where he was and what he did there.
Doctors managed to recreate its history bit by bit and compile a medical journal called "The Mad Traveler." It turned out that Dada had a passionate desire to travel in 1881, when he left the French army somewhere in the south of Belgium and moved first to Prague, then to Berlin, and then reached Moscow through eastern Prussia. In Moscow, Dada was arrested (the murder of Alexander II had just happened) and deported to Turkey. In Constantinople he was received at the French consulate and sent to Vienna, where he again found a job as a gas worker.
Soon after his story became known to the general public, Dada had followers, in any case, several more cases of dromomania are known in France around this time. There were not so many cases of the disease itself, but there was so much talk about this phenomenon in medical circles that it is quite pulling on a real epidemic. They gradually subsided by about 1909.
4. Koro or retractable genital syndrome
Koro syndrome is a panic that occurs in men when it seems to them that the penis is starting to retract into the abdominal cavity. This attack appeared in the form of an epidemic, the first known case of which dates back to 300 BC. Most often, manifestations of karo were observed in Africa or Asia and were accompanied by fear of imminent death. The last outbreak of coro occurred in 1967 in Singapore, when more than a thousand men tried to prevent their manhood from being drawn in with the help of improvised items - various clamps and sticks.
Women also experienced something similar - they experienced a panic that their breasts or nipples disappear. But among the men, there were still immeasurably more victims. Psychologists believe that such epidemics are characteristic of cultures in which a person's value is measured by his ability to reproduce. More often than not, epidemics followed periods of social tension and general anxiety. In China, fox spirits are considered to be the culprits of the koro, and in Africa they are sure that this is the result of witchcraft.
5. Motor hysteria
In the Middle Ages, reports of various kinds of hysterical conditions among the inhabitants of monasteries were not uncommon. In one monastery, for example, the nuns suddenly began to meow and climb trees and generally behave like cats. Similar epidemics have occurred for 300 years (beginning in 1400) throughout Europe. One of the last cases occurred in 1749 in Würzburg (Germany), when, after massive fainting and foam at the mouth among the nuns, one woman was accused of witchcraft and beheaded. Usually the epidemics ended after the visit of the priest and the rite of exorcism.
Waller (the one who studied the possible causes of the dancing plague) proposed the theory that epidemics of a strange disease among nuns were caused by a combination of stress and religious trance.
Women were often sent to monasteries by force, and they were places with rather harsh laws, especially since 1400. Religious zeal for spiritual struggle was not within the power of everyone, and many of them lost their nerves. Any strange behavior was interpreted by the intervention of dark forces:
“They themselves admitted the possibility that they might become possessed and subconsciously took on this role,” Waller wrote.