¶ Historical Dancing Plague and Mass Hysteria
All right , cindy . Nine ladies dancing , woo-hoo , woo-hoo . Now , cindy , doesn't that sound so pleasant and delightful ? Nine ladies dancing Sounds lovely . It does , until you realize that there were some people in Central Europe and Western Europe , starting as early as the 7th century , all the way up to the mid-17th century , who danced until they died .
What , cindy , have you heard of the dancing plague ? No , what ? Yes , this was a real series of events .
I hear it was really contagious .
It really makes you start to fear songs like the Rhythm Is Gonna Get Ya .
Saturday .
Night Fever . So , as I mentioned , as the name implies , it was a contagion , but it wasn't caused by any sort of virus or bacteria . Instead , this is what's considered a mass psychogenic illness , also known as mass hysteria wait a minute .
This is an actual illness . Yes , I thought you were going to be like people were just obsessed with dancing and they called it a dancing play because everybody was catching it . No , this wasn't like .
This is an actual , actual . This was an actual , like mental condition , mental issue that manifested in dancing . So , as I had mentioned , the earliest notation that we have of this occurring is in the 17th century . However , the most famous occurrence was the dancing plague of 1518 . This took place in Strasbourg , in modern France .
So from July 1518 through September 1518 , about 50 to 400 people per day were uncontrollably dancing by choice . No , well , it was just no . No , cindy .
Not by choice . They just had a tune in their head and they just couldn't get it out .
No , not at all . It started with one individual woman who just began to dance uncontrollably and she was joined in by allegedly a group of young women . But once they started they could not stop and this eventually spread to other people in the community , and at first because the local doctors and clergymen thought that this was either a punishment from God .
So they actually the first woman who was infected , they dragged her off to the shrine of St Vitus , which is about a three-day oxen cart ride from the village . The woman was eventually cured , but physicians in the village thought that perhaps this was caused by an imbalance in the humors .
So at this time period people believed in the different humors in the body , that if you had an imbalance of , let's say , bile or blood , that that would cause various diseases . So they believed that there was an imbalance in dancing and they just needed to literally dance it out .
So , according to historical records , carpentry shops and different halls were converted into literally dance clubs so that people could dance this fever out . But that didn't actually happen and more and more people became infected and started dancing as well .
Wait a minute . Sorry , and I don't know if you know the answer to this , if you came across this . But if people said , hey , why are you dancing ? What would people say in response ? Like I don't know , I can't stop , yes , they just could not stop , yes , and they would be like desperate they weren't like isn't this great ?
No , they were really upset . They were upset . They literally could not stop . They were sweating . There are accounts of people you know literally passing out or collapsing from exhaustion .
Wait a minute , and what kind of dancing were they doing ? They're just moving .
They're all doing the thriller . It's more of a contortion , and there actually is a disorder called Seidenham's chorea which affects children between the ages of five and 15 years of age . It's more common in females than in males .
It's caused by an autoimmune response following a strep infection , and the hallmark is an abrupt onset of involuntary movements of all four limbs . It looks almost like dancing , the fingers start to move as if you're playing the piano , and then also there's dysarthria of the speech . The tongue moves in uncontrollable ways . It's a really horrible , horrible disease .
This is not that , though . There's more of a psychological component to it rather than a physiological response , and scholars have explored other possible potential causes . That perhaps is caused by ergot , so is that familiar at all ?
It sounds familiar , but I can't know Ergot is a spore or a fungus that grows on bread and it can have psychedelic properties when ingested . So can you think of another time when a group of young women eating spoiled bread went a little ?
bit crazy . It was Salem witch trials .
Yes , yes , exactly . So this theory doesn't really hold water because there aren't any movements of the limbs that are associated with ergot poisoning , so that's probably out . Some historians believe it could have been staged like this was all an act , but to have that many people involved at once is a little hard to believe .
I tend to favor the idea that this was all like a psychological response . Some historians have said that it could be in response to this shared stress that I guess during this time period there was like significant famine going on and , um , people , just this is a way that they had . To me , this is a way , was a way .
This was a way for them to cope with that stress and , as almost like a catharsis , to get it to relieve that shared communal stress .
Well , and this is a serious comment , because part of me wants to say , well now , part of me wants to say what are the odds that everybody is so stressed out that they all are like let's dance , Like we have to dance to me pass out ?
But on the other hand , I'm always comparing in my mind , I'm always trying to see what is a modern day version of this behavior , and the thing is is we do a lot of the same things to deal with stress as a population . Right For COVID , what did we all do ? We all watched the Tiger King .
Yes , or adopted way too many plants .
Exactly , exactly . So I guess , on the other hand , why ? I mean these people did not have Tiger King ? They did not . They had plants but they didn't have like cute little pots to put them in and things , maybe that was . They were like hey , like that was their group response , maybe exactly in an unspoken way .
that's right and I like that . You brought up the idea of okay , what's the contemporary equivalent of this ? And so I did a little bit of digging and there are lots of other instances where this has happened .
There are examples of like spontaneous , uncontrollable laughter in girls' schools that just permeates through the community and people just literally cannot stop .
The most recent example , which I found incredibly interesting because this is also taking place in Western Europe as well in Germany , they have seen , since 2019 , an enormous spike in the number of particularly young women who have gone to mental health professionals for Tourette syndrome diagnoses , and the reason for this these researchers have tied it directly back to
the second most popular YouTuber in Germany in 2019 is a young man who has mild Tourette's syndrome , and these young women are convinced that they , too , have Tourette's syndrome because he is so popular .
And these researchers have determined that every single young woman who has gone to there's I guess , a big Tourette's clinic in Germany , who've gone to this clinic to try and get help and get a diagnosis not one has actually been diagnosed with Tourette's .
So are these people who are ? Are they suggesting that these girls are trying to copy the behaviors because they want to be more like this person ? Or is it because this person is so popular he sort of has permeated their own lives and they start to think that they're like him ? Does that make sense ?
A little bit of both , but it's not a conscious thing , it's the adapting of this persona and I think a bit of it is . He's getting so much attention for it . And what was really , really interesting is that all these girls who come in have a very similar profile , because Tourette's syndrome is a significant neurologic condition that affects people .
You have no control over it . But they found that these girls , they would come in and they would present with these symptoms , but they would disappear when they were doing preferred activities . But when they had to do things like schoolwork and things that they didn't want to do , then all these symptoms would manifest .
They also found that when these girls were told no , you don't have Tourette's syndrome , then all of the symptoms disappeared . How interesting , very bizarre .
So I'm thinking back to this original woman who started to dance and couldn't stop . Was she just trying to get out of work ? She was like I have been married for 17 years . I have 12 children . I'm just I need a break .
I need to dance all my cares away , my cares away .
So have we seen the dance plague ?
reemerge . No , cindy , after the mid-17th century it just kind of disappeared . So we have not actually seen . As far as I know , we haven't seen it come back . I mean , I was a big fan of Cotton Eye Joe , so I feel like that was very popular , but that doesn't even touch . That's like the tip of the iceberg , I suppose .
Oh , and one other thing I would like to point out , and I feel like this is very important to mention . So when you read some of these less historic accounts of this , a lot of stories on YouTube or a lot of videos on YouTube or blog posts , it'll say up to 15 people a day were dying from dancing .
Contemporary reports really don't show any vast increase in people dying in these various communities , because records were kept of births and deaths within the community and we don't see this huge spike of like dancing related deaths . So unfortunately , it's not true .
It's not as deadly as one would believe , although there are records of other individuals who were caught up in these various , these various outbreaks of dancing mania , who did die .
But not because of the dancing .
No , because of the dancing . No , no , I'm just saying , in my specific , the dancing plague of 1518 , as far as we know , no one died , but there was a dancing plague in the 1020s . There was a dancing plague in 1374 in different areas and people did die of those .
¶ Dance Floor Survival Tips
So the next time you go clubbing , hydrate , don't wear wooden shoes , because that'll cut up your feet , and just live your best life . Just let it all go on the dance floor , but just make sure you go sit down and take a nap . Don't actually dance yourself to death , please . Thank you .
I'll try not to Thanks for watching .