By Seriously Science in Discover Magazine
In
their free time, some scientists and doctors like to try to figure out causes
of medically-related historical events. For example, the authors of this study
investigate what may have caused the crazy dancing “epidemic” of 1518 in
Strasbourg: “Some time in mid-July 1518 a lone woman stepped into one of its
narrow streets and began a dancing vigil that was to last four or even 6 days
in succession. Within a week another 34 had joined the dance. And by the end of
August, one chronicler asserts, 400 people had experienced the madness, dancing
wildly, uncontrollably around the city.” And this wasn’t a sedate affair; the
dancers’ feet often ended up bruised and bloody. The authors were not able assign
a biological cause to the epidemic (it seems unlikely that hallucinogenic
compounds from the rye fungus ergot were involved), but they suggest that
hunger and psychological stress were the likely culprit, with a healthy dose of
religious belief thrown in: “In times of acute hardship, with physical and
mental distress leaving people more than usually suggestible, a fear of St
Vitus could rapidly take hold. All it then took was for one or a few
emotionally frail people, believing themselves to have been cursed by St.Vitus,
to slip into a trance. Then they would unconsciously act out the part of those
who had incurred his wrath: dancing wildly, uncontrollably for days on end.”
The description of the events, and the government’s (likely unhelpful) response,
is fascinating. We have included our favorite bits from the full text below. Enjoy!
“In
1518, one of the strangest epidemics in recorded history struck the city of
Strasbourg. Hundreds of people were seized by an irresistible urge to dance,
hop and leap into the air. In houses, halls and public spaces, as fear paralyzed
the city and the members of the elite despaired, the dancing continued with
mindless intensity. Seldom pausing to eat, drink or rest, many of them danced
for days or even weeks. And before long, the chronicles agree, dozens were
dying from exhaustion. What was it that could have impelled as many as 400
people to dance, in some cases to death?”
“As the
dance turned epidemic, troubled nobles and burghers consulted local physicians.
Having excluded astrological and supernatural causes, the members of the
medical fraternity declared it to be a ‘natural disease’ caused by ‘hot blood’
2, 4 and 5. This was orthodox physic, consistent with Galen’s view that bloody
fluxes could overheat the brain, causing anger, rashness and madness. But the
response of the authorities was neither to bleed nor to provide cooling diets.
Instead they prescribed ‘more dancing’. To this end they cleared two guildhalls
and the outdoor grain market and they even had a wooden stage constructed
opposite the horse fair. To these locations the dancers were taken so they
could dance freely and uninterrupted. The victims would only recover their
minds, said the authorities, if they persisted both day and night with their
frantic movements. And to facilitate this supposed cure, the authorities next
paid for musicians and professional dancers to keep the afflicted moving.
Every
time the sick flagged, fainted, stumbled or slowed, the musicians raised the
tempo of their playing and hired dancers held them firm and quickened their
pace (Figure 2). ‘They danced day and night with those poor people’, one
eye-witness recalled 1, 2 and 4. In grain market and horse fair, the elites had
created spectacles every bit as grotesque as a Hieronymous Bosch canvas
portraying human folly or the torments of Hell.
Only
after those with weak hearts or prone to strokes began to die did the governors
rethink their strategy. Deciding that the dance had nothing to do with
putrefying blood cooking normally moist and cool brains, they now saw it as a
curse sent down by an angry saint. Hence, a period of organised contrition was
instituted: gambling, gaming and prostitution were banned and the dissolute
driven beyond the city gates. Soon after the dancers were despatched to a
mountaintop shrine in the Vosges mountains to pray for divine intercession.
There they were led around an altar, wearing red shoes provided for the
ceremony, upon which stood a bas-relief carving of St. Vitus, the Virgin and
Pope Marcellus. In the following weeks the epidemic abated. Most of the
dancers, we are told, regained bodily control…”
The original link can be
found at:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/seriouslyscience/2014/01/10/flashback-friday-mysterious-dancing-epidemic-1518/
A wiki link on the same
subject can be found at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dancing_Plague_of_1518
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