Mass hysteria? Hallucinogenic mushrooms? Dire Effects of Mysticism? The causes of the "dance plague" are still controversial, as are the course of the disease and its most drastic consequences. One thing is certain: the mysterious affliction has struck thousands of people throughout the Middle Ages and the early modern era.
John Waller - a professor of medical history at the University of Michigan who has devoted a considerable part of his career to researching this subject - has tracked down at least eight cases of one-of-a-kind epidemics in Western Europe.
The earliest one was recorded in the years 1021-1022. The last on a significant scale was in 1518. All of them occurred in the basins of the Rhine and Moselle, in the borderlands between France, Germany, and the Netherlands. Details differed, but the basic details coincided.
The "dancing plague" - as a particular ailment is called today - affected each time from several dozen to even several hundred people. The sick suddenly and unknowingly went into a dance. They did it without any music, visible external stimuli, and without any signs that they enjoyed the activity. Nor have they ever been able to break out of an involuntary trance.
They danced for hours on end, until they finally lost consciousness. When they got back together, they immediately started jiggling again. And so successively for many days, sometimes even weeks. The victims of the disease were losing all their strength, their legs swelled, and their feet were bleeding from the constant movement ...
The first attack of the ailment, the one in 1021-1022, took place in the town of Kölbigk. In 1247 a dancing plague was encountered in Erfurt, and a little later in Maastricht.
In the last town, the plague was supposed to affect as many as two hundred people. They performed their crazy dances on the bridge on the Moselle, which collapsed and the sick were drowned in the river.
John Waller points out that early accounts could have been significantly manipulated by chroniclers. Some even look like anecdotes, not reports on historical events. From the late Middle Ages to the beginning of the modern era, however, the hits of the "dance plague" are known, beyond any doubt.
Dozens of different sources describe an epidemic that in 1374 swept not through one city, but a large part of the Rhine border.
The most famous, however, is the "dance plague", which was recorded in Strasbourg almost a century and a half later.
"She trembled for a moment, then fell asleep"
“It started quite innocently,” writes Jennifer Wright in her new book What Will (Not) Kill Us. The greatest plagues in human history. - "In July 1518, a certain Frau Troffea began to dance in the street." Why he was doing this was not understood, and she could neither stop nor explain herself.
When she danced until the evening, people started to comment that ... she was probably trying to play on the nerves of her uglier half. Even in 1532, the influential Swiss doctor Paracelsus wrote with contempt that Frau Troffea was dancing because her husband "told her to do something she did not want to do."
"After she finished dancing, she fell to offend her husband. She trembled for a moment and then fell asleep. She claimed it was all about illness, and she would say no more, all to make a fool of her husband."
However, the woman did not stop there. The next day she continued dancing. After two days, too. And although she was overpowered and taken to a chapel far from the city, other inhabitants of Strasbourg soon began to dance. At least fifty people and some sources say even four hundred.
It is not clear what the disease has caused. John Waller cites in the sources of his work according to fifteen people died of exhaustion every day. In total, at least several dozen.
Elisabeth Clementz, a historian at the University of Strasbourg, says, however, that no death toll can be confirmed. The dead were not written about until late, processed and unreliable reports of an attack of the disease.
It is only known for certain that people danced en masse and tirelessly. And the desperate local authorities even ordered a special stage to be put on in the city center, where the sick were to flutter day and night until they managed to "break the curse".
"The impression that a man's limbs are on fire"
Until today, it has not been possible to fully convincingly explain what caused the unique disease. According to popular theory, the "dance plague" was the result of poisoning with a psychoactive mold fungus with a chemical composition similar to LSD.
"Many outbreaks of the dance epidemic occurred near rivers where rye grew," writes Jennifer Wright in the pages What Will (Not) Kill Us. The worst plagues in human history.
"Ergot is a special type of fungus that can grow in grain. Whoever eats rye infected with it can experience terrible symptoms, such as the sensation that a person's limbs are on fire."
A professor from Michigan presented an alternative solution in his books. In his opinion, the "dance plague" was a kind of social psychosis. Human-to-human transmission not through psychoactive mushrooms, but through the power of suggestion and culturally-rooted fears.
Especially "desperation created the right conditions for an extreme mental reaction." Meanwhile, Strasbourg faced famine in the early 16th century, catastrophic price rises, recurrence of plague and leprosy, and the first blow of syphilis.
"It was a hysterical reaction, feeding on human suffering and the deepest harassment and fear," Waller emphasizes. - "But a reaction that could only manifest itself in a culture steeped in specific, supernatural beliefs." It corresponded to the fears and ideas of the people of the Middle Ages. Therefore, after the Reformation and Printing Age, the epidemic gradually faded away.
"Extreme stress can manifest itself in real, physical, and frightening ways," concludes Jennifer Wright in What Will (Not) Kill Us. The greatest plagues in human history. And this one conclusion from a mysterious disease hundreds of years ago should be kept in mind today as well. "
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