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Writer's pictureFibonacciMD
Nov 27

The Dancing Plague of 1518

Discover the chilling tale of the 1518 Dancing Plague, a mysterious outbreak that baffled medieval Europe. Uncover the potential causes of this historical anomaly.

Medical Marvels

On July 14, 1518 in Strasbourg, France (then part of the Holy Roman Empire) a woman named Frau Troffea began to dance uncontrollably in the street and would not or could not stop.  She kept dancing for nearly six days until she collapsed from exhaustion.  Soon after she started, about three dozen other people joined in and also started dancing uncontrollably.  By August the “dancing plague” had affected a total of about 400 victims.


A poem reportedly written at the time described the 1581 dancing plague event:


Many hundreds in Strassburg [sic] began,

To dance and hop, women and men,

In the public market, in alleys and streets,

Day and night; and many of them ate nothing

Until at last the sickness left them.

This affliction was called St Vitus’ dance.


Local physicians thought the malady was caused by “hot blood” and suggested they allow and encourage the dancers to continue to dance, to free themselves of this malady.  A stage was built, and musicians and professional dancers were brought in to assist in that endeavor.  However, people started collapsing from exhaustion and some even died from dancing in the summer heat, reportedly up to 15 people dying in a day.


After Frau Troffea had collapsed, she was sent on a several-day journey to the shrine of Saint Vitus where she was cured.  As the “plague” spread to more people and the dance cure was failing to stop the epidemic, local officials felt enough was enough, and stopped the musical accompaniment, banned street dancing and started sending the dancers to the shrine of Saint Vitus for healing.  There they were given crosses, red shoes with crosses on them that were sprinkled with holy water, and engaged in chanting.  After some of the worst afflicted were sent to St. Vitus and cured, the rest of the dancers were shipped off by the town for this treatment.  By September the “dancing plague” was over.


Interestingly, this was not the first time this type of dancing mania had occurred and there had been several other outbreaks in earlier times in medieval Europe.  The most well-known was in 1374 affecting several towns along the Rhine River.


As to the cause, there are several theories.  One is that ingesting rye flour contaminated with ergot, a fungal disease of grain which can cause hallucinations and convulsions, might have been the precipitant.  In fact, ergot is the source of lysergic acid from which LSD is produced.  However, while ergot can acutely cause problems, this is unlikely to make someone dance for days on end.


St. Vitus Dance

A more likely theory is that the unusual behaviors demonstrated during the dancing plague were from a mass psychogenic illness (in the past sometimes called mass hysteria), which can occur under times of great stress.  At the time there were a series of famines due to poor harvests, high grain prices, as well as fears about infectious diseases such as plague and syphilis spreading through Europe.  There was also the possible influence of the St. Vitus superstition, which was that the saint had the power to curse people with a dancing plague which was known as the St. Vitus’ dance.


 

If you enjoyed reading this article, you may be interested in reading Benjamin Frankin, Mesmerism, and the First Use of Placebos in Science 


 

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