The strange epidemic of "dancing like crazy until you can't breathe" has forced science to give up

In the summer of 1518, a strange plague in the present-day French city of Strasbourg caused hundreds of people to dance uncontrollably for weeks on end until they died of exhaustion.

According to History and BBC, on July 14, 1518, a woman named Frau Troffea in Strasbourg, present-day France, left home and started dancing. She danced for hours until she collapsed and convulsed from exhaustion. After resting, Frau continued to dance wildly as if hypnotized. Frau danced non-stop for days, and by August, about 400 locals were dancing madly alongside her.

No one knows what made the people of Strasbourg dance against their will or why the dance lasted so long, but in the end up to 100 people died.

Historians call this strange event the dancing plague of 1518 and after hundreds of years people are still learning the mysteries surrounding it.

Although records of the dancing epidemic - also known as dancing mania - are often unclear, surviving reports have revealed some information about this unusual epidemic.

After the dancing epidemic began causing Frau Troffea to twist, turn, and shake her body endlessly throughout the day, her body was finally severely exhausted and Frau fell into a deep sleep. However, this cycle kept repeating every day no matter how bloody and bruised Frau's legs were. Frau danced for nearly a week and soon there were 30 people doing exactly the same thing as her.

Unable to come up with any reasonable explanation, the crowd who witnessed Frau dancing assumed it was the work of the devil. They claimed that Frau had sinned and was therefore unable to resist the demonic power that wanted to control her body.

After days of nonstop dancing and no explanation for her uncontrollable urges, Frau was taken to a sacred area in the Vosges mountains as atonement for her sins. But that didn't end everything, the dancing epidemic quickly spread throughout the city.

About 30 people quickly took Frau Troffea's place and danced nonstop in both public places and private homes. They also cannot stop like Frau.

Reports say that at the peak of the epidemic, up to 400 people danced in the streets. The dancing craze lasted for 2 months, causing many people to collapse and even die from heart attacks, exhaustion and strokes.

One source said that at the peak of the dance craze, 15 people died every day. In the end, up to 100 people died from this strange disease. Many people expressed doubts about the story and questioned how people could dance nonstop for weeks at a time.

People at that time believed that this dancing epidemic could be cured by "treating poison with poison". So they built wooden stages and invited musicians to help the victims dance. However, the result not only did not stop it, but on the contrary, it also caused dozens of other people to participate in non-stop dancing and then die of myocardial infarction.

For hundreds of years, scientists have sought answers to the question "why do crowds dance until they stop breathing?", but this is still a mystery.

This may sound like an ancient folk tale, but in fact the "dancing epidemic" of 1518 was clearly recorded in medical, civil, and religious texts. Not only that, the disease also appears in Switzerland, Germany, and the Netherlands.

Researchers have proposed many hypotheses. Most people believe that Troffea and the victims most likely suffered from a neurological disease due to severe stress. At that time, hunger and malnutrition were raging in Strasbourg. In the context of tension under the impact of the community, many people are victims of collective dissociation disorder.

Some other researchers favor the hypothesis that this disease came from agriculture. The villagers ate fungus-infected barley grains, also known as barley spurs, causing epilepsy.

The final hypothesis was put forward by Michigan State University professor John Waller. He believes that this mass psychological disorder originates from superstition. Most of the victims are people who are about to succumb to hunger, they have nothing left, they don't know where to turn to other than their faith, and fear fills their minds. Therefore, they may have danced with the desire to receive help from the Supreme Being until their death.

To date, there is still no completely accurate answer to this dancing epidemic. Back in 1518, seeing that wooden stages were not effective, the authorities banned many evils including gambling and prostitution as a way of penance. The dancers were taken to the temple on the Vosges mountain to pray. There, they walk around the altar wearing red shoes. A few weeks later, the epidemic subsided. Most patients, according to records, regained control of their bodies and returned to a normal state.

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