Performing dances in more public spaces facilitated the spread of the psychic “contagion”. All rights reserved. Ms. Troffea should have been dead through dehydration after about three days. In July 1518, a woman whose name was given as Frau (Mrs.) Troffea (or Trauffea) stepped into the street and began dancing. These were common people, not trained athletes. Since we are unable to determine if the dancers were eating and drinking during their ordeal, we cannot make a conclusion. People were leaping, jerking, and hopping around, seemingly to music no one else could hear. The said epidemic commenced in July of 1518 and claimed over 400 lives by the end of August. USOs and Marine Exploration. The dancing plague (or dance epidemic) of 1518 was a case of dancing mania that occurred in Strasbourg, Alsace (now modern-day France), in the Holy Roman Empire in July 1518. After examining the rather old evidence and stories, there are still many questions unanswered. Despite the priest’s efforts, the anti-religious group wouldn’t stop, in fact his intervention only made them dance more vigorously and chant louder. According to an account written in the 1530s by the irascible but brilliant physician Paracelsus, the “dancing plague of Strasbourg” began in mid-July 1518, when a … So confident were they that a stage was constructed and professional dancers were brought in to join the sick. In 1518, People “danced themselves to death” for no obvious reason in Strasbourg, France. It wasn’t all fun and games either. I choose to leave my footprint in the world with written works. Ergotamine is the main psychoactive product of ergot fungi; it is structurally related to the drug lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD-25), and is the substance from which LSD-25 was originally synthesized. Modern theories include food-poisoning caused by the toxic and psychoactive chemical products of ergot fungi, which grows commonly on grains in the wheat family (such as rye) that was used for baking bread. Waller speculates that the dancing was “stress-induced psychosis” on a mass level, since the region where the people danced was riddled with starvation and disease, and the inhabitants tended to be superstitious. Every performer, every production wants to stand out. The Edge of Reality. With smallpox, syphilis, and the bubonic plague all active in Europe, it’s a valid avenue for study. There are a lot of questions left to be answered: why only women danced, why such epidemics do not recur in poor countries and many others. Coffin Nails – Light or Dark? BBC News. Paranormal news, articles, real ghost stories, UFO, aliens and everything from A to Z of the unexplained, strange & odd. Love's an eternal flame. Blog. Some consider raves to be a form of dance-mania, with participants dancing for hours, sometimes to the point of exhaustion. It was the month of July in the year 1518, in Strasbourg, France. This post, about the Dancing Plague of 1518, is one of eighty entries in Archive, each more gameable than the last! It happened. One of the most bizarre incidents of 1518 – “The Dancing Plague” is unforgettable in the history of humankind. Fake Palm Readers And The Tricks They Use, The Great UFO Battle of 1561 – Witnessed in Nuremberg, Germany, The Great Red Australian Dust Storm of 2009, Death on the Mountain of the Dead – The Dyatlov Pass Incident, Breathtaking Beauty of the Northern Lights - The Gypsy Thread, Toxic Threesome – Conflict, Acid Rain, and Desperation. The dancing plague had lasted for over a month, from mid-July to late August or early September. Some of these people died from heart attacks, strokes, or exhaustion. The Dancing Plague The outbreak began in July 1518, when a woman, Frau Troffea, began to dance fervently in a street in Strasbourg. The authorities were convinced that the afflicted would only recover if they danced day and night. Although it sounds impossible, the evidence is ironclad of the occurrence. All rights reserved. A Bad Case of Hot Blood Amid the narrow lanes, shops, and fairs of the medieval city of Strasbourg, France, Frau Troffea stepped into the street and began to dance. They then go one step further and attribute this bizarre dancing behavior to stress-induced psychosis. the despair caused by the ruthless years (even by the rough standards of the Middle Ages) the people of Alsace were suffering. The dancing plague (or dance epidemic) of 1518 was a case of dancing mania that occurred in Strasbourg, Alsace (now modern-day France), in the Holy Roman Empire in July 1518. The dancing plague, also referred to as a dancing mania, is reported to have happened throughout parts of Western Europe. A stage was built, professional dancers were brought in, and a band was even hired. According to him, people under stress tend to go into a trance … Reports from the time indicate that the dancers were doing so unwillingly, many people reportedly screaming in … Around 400 people took to dancing for days without rest the mania lasted for about two months before ending as mysteriously as it began. What could have led people to literally dance themselves to death? The Dancing Plague of 1518 was a strange case of mass hysteria in Strasbourg, a village in present-day France. This was the first documented cases of this phenomenon. In ancient times, many people had a great understanding of the effects of certain plants and mushrooms found in the woods. Prezi’s Big Ideas 2021: Expert advice for the new year; Dec. 15, 2020. A final school of thought states that the dancing was in result of some kind of religious ecstasy caused by veneration of Saint Vitus, the patron saint of epilepsy. Bit by bit the dancers stopped, and the dancing would end as mysteriously as it … It was the month of July in the year 1518, in Strasbourg, France. One woman started it, and others joined her. Other incidents of cults or counter-religious groups using mass dancing are known. Strasbourg 1518 choreographer and director Lucy Marinkovich could have done without carving out one particular piece of history. On Christmas Eve of 1021 in Kölbigk, Germany, people supposedly formed a human ring around a church and began chanting and dancing. There  were instances of dancing fevers going as far back as the 7th century and up all the way up to the 17th century. Others begin having sex with one another. 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Gray – Victim Of The Beast 666, The Antikythera Mechanism: A 2,000-year-old Computer, Impossible To Split: In Amsterdam Live Conjoined Twin Sisters. Famine, drought, premature death, disease, and miserable living conditions are all cited as causes for the high stress levels. Some would die from heart failure or later succumb to injuries suffered from their violent dance. Clergymen and city leaders struggled to determine the cause of the strange series of events. Within a week about 100 people had been consumed by the same irresistible urge to dance. The residents of the city of Strasbourg, France (then part of the Holy Roman Empire), in July 1518, was struck by a sudden and uncontrollable urge to dance, where the people even ‘danced themselves to death’! Another factors to take into consideration would be other diseases active in the area at the time; perhaps this phenomena was a side-effect. Unfortunately by the end of the summer, dozens had succumbed to the non-stop exertion and died. It affected people from the 14th to the 17th century. Besides the violent dancing, reports that some rolled around on the ground making animal sounds. The ergotism theory also fails to explain why virtually every outbreak occurred somewhere along the Rhine and Moselle rivers, areas linked by water but with quite different climates and crops”. They assumed that the dancing was leading to the participants being cured in their own strange way. The societies of the time offered explanations, ranging from demonic possession, wrath of God to bites of spiders. In 1374, hundreds of villagers along the Rhine River took to the streets in what was described as a strange dance. This kind of comportment could have been caused by the elevated levels of psychological stress, i.e. Copyright © 2020 The Gypsy Thread. This sounds plausible but improbable. Would the high-stress of everyday living in ancient times actually be enough to drive people to a dancing madness? Local physicians blamed it on “hot blood,” suggesting the participants had some sort of mysterious fever. Since the dancers seemed to be dancing in a state of trance, it could have been brought upon by extreme psychological distress. Ghost of Deceased Woman Used Telephones to Advise and Warn. In the decade before the dancing plague of 1518, famine, sickness and terrible cold caused widespread despair in Strasbourg and its environs (Rapp, 1974). The city leaders even went so far as to hire musicians to provide backing music; helping the afflicted get through their sickness. The non-stop dancing marathon started to take its toll. Nor would so many people have reacted to its psychotropic chemicals in the same way. At the time, no one had an explanation for the odd behavior of so many people. Protective or Disruptive? In both cases, the people were in despair – as they were when the Black Death ravaged the continent in the 1340s. With no forensic evidence to test, there are multiple theories on what caused this bizarre event in the first place. Within a … Were they cured to return to their lives, or something else? Within a week, more than 30 people in the city had joined her in an impromptu, involuntary erratic… What happened to the people who went to the high mountain shrine? The authorities did this because they believed that the dancers would recover only if they danced continuously night and day. None of the theories completely explain the 1518 dancing. Historical documents, including “physician notes, cathedral sermons, local and regional chronicles, and even notes issued by the Strasbourg city council” are clear that the victims danced. It leaves too many unanswered questions and fails to clearly identify why some people were affected and others were not. Many of the dancers collapsed from sheer exhaustion; their bodies drained of energy just stopped functioning. The alkaloids that cause hallucinations, seizures, mania, convulsions, irrational behavior, and unconsciousness would overwhelm the human body and could easily be characterized as dance plague. No limb loss was reported in either of these incidents of Dance Mania, during or afterwards. Feel free to comment or reach out to me directly if the need arises. The level of continued physical exertion revealed by the records isn’t sustainable for a human being. The Mysterious Dancing Plague: When People Danced Themselves To Death! Quite a few people suggested calling in professional dancers so they could all dance together and collectively cease dancing. One of the first major outbreaks was in the Holy Roman Empire, in 1374, which quickly spread throughout Europe. Somewhere between 50 and 400 people took to dancing for days. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Within a week, 34 others had joined, and within a month, there were around 400 dancers. Sometime in mid-July 1518, in the city of Strasbourg, a woman stepped into the street and started to dance. The ranks of dancers quickly grew into the thousands with people vigorously jumping and dancing about, some also screaming and chanting. It is not known why these people danced, some even to their deaths. She then began a fervent dancing vigil, all alone for somewhere between four and six days. There were whispers of curses and cults causing the dancing, and people were losing faith in seeing a clear path to healing. We can review evidence from other similar dancing events to determine if any correlations can be discovered. Yes, they gave medical doctors a chance to “cure” the sickness, but when thing failed, the church was viewed as the better choice. As the dancing plague worsened, concerned nobles sought the advice of local physicians, who ruled out astrological and supernatural causes, instead, announcing that the plague was a “natural disease” caused by “hot blood”. Copyright © 2020 RJ Schwartz. The first documented case of a dancing plague took place in Aachen, Germany. Of course the tale is unbelievable, but it was reported that many died from exhaustion. As tensions grew in this age of superstition, attention turned from the medical community to the church for a solution. The most notable incident of this plague occurred in the summer of 1518 in Strasbourg, France, where people would drop dead from exhaustion. However, the sources of the city of Strasbourg at the time of the events did not mention the number of deaths, or even if there were fatalities. Also we know that ergotism existed. Daily updated website dedicated to unexplained mysteries. 28 June 2011. In order to truly survive and thrive in the world we live in, each one of us must take the bold step to tell the world who we are and what we believe in. The Dancing Plague: The Strange, True Story of an Extraordinary Illness. Postcards From the Edge. Rules and Regulations. “We had the dubious honour of being the first show in New Zealand to shut down because of COVID,” she muses. The sufferers are primarily adolescent females. Image It seemed like any normal day in July 1518 for the people of Strasbourg France. Ignoring him, they held hands and danced a “ring dance of sin”, clapping, leaping, and chanting in unison. A condition brought on when rye and other grains were infected with a fungus called Claviceps Purpurea. Required fields are marked *. 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