The most prolific case of “dancing mania” was the dancing plague of 1518 in Strasbourg (then in the Holy Roman Empire, today in France). What began as one single woman dancing in the streets, turned into a deadly epidemic. Also known as Saint Vitus’ Dance, named for the patron saint of dances, the plague began when Frau Troffea stepped outside her house on a hot summer morning and began to shake, spin, and sway. After a straight day and night of dancing, she collapsed, only to begin again the next day and the next. Some encouraged her to rest and eat, others prayed at the shrine of Saint Vitus, while a crowd of onlookers watched mesmerized. Despite Frau Troffea’s treatment at the shrine, the townspeople got the itch, pouring out onto the streets to dance. The sun as well as the moving bodies did not let up, and people passed out from dehydration and fatigue. They either danced till their feet bled, they fell over, flung them selves in the river for relief, or died on the make-shift dance floor.
It was thought that perhaps the only way to aid these poor souls was to encourage them to dance the disease out of their systems. Physicians proposed that the mania was caused by “hot blood.” Music did nothing to cease the senseless behavior so it was henceforth outlawed. After about a month, things calmed down in Strasbourg and medieval life resumed as normal.
Historians estimate that up to 400 people died to dance. Why? Theories range from Frau Troffea danced deliberately to defy her husband and other women followed as an act of camaraderie to the dancing was brought on by hallucinations produced by eating rye laced with fungus. Recently, it is believed that the madness was essentially mass-stress due to failed harvests, the political climate and rampant disease (hello, the black plague).
