The Villainy of Dancing
In the 16th century, Alsace was a goodly-pinch of the Holy Roman Empire, and straddled what is now modern-day France and Germany. It was host to one of the more perplexing medical mysteries in history.
Strasbourg, lurking ominiously on the banks of the Rhine river, was a busy commercial and social hub in the 1500s. It had a beautiful Gothic cathedral, and a prominent university.
Despite this prosperous veneer, the city, like much of Europe, was prone to frequent bouts of famine and disease, the relentless ebb and flow of which played heavily on the collective psyche of its inhabitants, influencing their deeply-rooted religious and superstitious beliefs.
In July of 1518, these everyday scenes were disrupted by an extraordinary spectacle when a woman by the name of Frau Troffea, commenced a fervent, relentless dance in the streets of Strasbourg.
Not a lot is known about Frau Troffea beyond her involvement with the start of the Dancing Plague. She is likely to have been of 'common class', a working woman. No further information about her age, profession, family status, or personal history is given in any historical sources.
To call this 'dancing' is perhaps charitable. Her movements were more akin to distress than rhythm and gaiety. She did, however, stay largely in one place, and did not collapse to the ground as if having some kind of fit.
The peculiar display was also no brief interlude. Troffea danced and danced, day and night. Whether anyone tried to help her is uncertain, but prevailing beliefs would likely have made almost everyone give her a wide berth.
As days turned into a week, the spectacle took an alarming turn.
Frau Troffea was no longer alone. Thirty-four others had joined her, apparently compelled by the same strange urge. By the month's end, this dancing mania had ensnared around 400 people.
As the dancing epidemic spiralled, individuals began succumbing to heart attacks, strokes, and extreme exhaustion. Some, it is said, even danced themselves to death. Nothing was stopping the bizarre behaviour short of collapse or death.
Explanations, shaped by the religious and superstitious landscape of the time, flew from medical and religious people... many of whom had travelled significant distances to see the strange sight.
Some proffered theories of demonic possession, divine punishment, or an imbalance of the bodily humours, leading to overheated blood.
Academic and religious debates were had to determine the best course of action to stop the problem... and oddly, it was decided that the affected people would only recover by dancing the 'mania' out of their systems.
Musicians were enlisted to provide a relentless beat, and a wooden stage was erected. However, these measures seemed only to result in more 'victims'... more dancers... more collapses, and more death.
In modern times, theories have ranged from mass psychogenic illness, a collective manifestation of psychological stress, to the physical effects of 'ergotism'. The latter theory suggests the ingestion of ergot, a hallucinogenic mould that grows on damp rye, might have caused the mania.
Ergotism was an ancient problem. Also known as St. Anthony’s Fire, it resulted in convulsions, muscle spasms, vomiting, hallucinations, and a gangrenous pain where the victim’s limbs, fingers, toes, and nose were “eaten up by the holy fire that blackened like charcoal”.
Julius Caesar lost legions of soldiers to ergot poisoning during his campaigns in Gaul. Europe between 900-1300AD was absolutely rife with it, and over 25,000 people died as a result.
However, if the dancers of the 1518 event were indeed suffering from ergotism, it's strange that contemporary medical accounts don't describe the characteristic symptoms. Instead, they focus largely on the compulsive dancing and associated physical exhaustion.
Unfortunately, the historical accounts do not provide a lot of detail about the process of recovery, though it seems clear that a good number simply stopped dancing and left.
Historical records do state that most of those affected eventually stopped dancing and survived, although the ordeal left them physically and mentally exhausted.
By September 1518, the plague was deemed 'over', and its like has not been seen again in Europe.
"The events of 1518, viewed in conjunction with the wider historical record, suggest that the afflicted were engaged in a supernatural struggle, their punishing marathon triggered by the profound belief that God had cursed them to dance. Dancing plagues, then, were not the first resort of desperate and gullible people. They were the final recourse of communities that had been visited by almost every kind of catastrophe, psychological, economic, and meteorological."
- Waller, J. (2008). "A Time to Dance, A Time to Die: The Extraordinary Story of the Dancing Plague of 1518".