So I remember looking into this a while ago, and I don't really have proof, but it seems like the description of "dance" is probably misleading. There's, for instance, something called St. Vitis' Dance, which is a neurological condition people still get today. You can look at videos of that and I don't think any modern person would possibly describe that as dancing, but that's how it was perceived in an older age. As fascinating as the case of the dancing plague is, I suspect it was a disease with the more mundane symptom of muscular dyskinesia or dystonia and we're imagining something akin to actual dancing.
Again, I have no proof. It just seems like we're taking the descriptions we have too literally from an era where medical terminology was often metaphorical and made by people with an extremely limited understanding of disease.
Looking at this example of Sydenham chorea (which seems to be the underlying condition behind the symptom named St Vitus' dance?), I could see it being described as a dance:
In looking into that, ‘dance’ doesn’t seem a far fetched description.
Things like Sydenham’s chorea match too, and could be described as a dance. Another name for it is rheumatic chorea - and it can present soon after a strep throat infection.
There are plenty of medical or lay terms for medical things that are less accurate.
Huntington's disease looks nothing like dancing yet it's called chorea, which is Greek for dance. I believe that the term was historically used rather loosely for a variety of involuntary movement/neurological symptoms we might today call dyskinesia, tremors, tics, or even seizures.
I think you are most likely correct. However, I’m still very curious about this event. Those kinds of diseases are typically neural degenerate, and not often readily transmissible. What could cause an entire town to catch it simultaneously? Something in the water or food supply?
Ergot is a fungus / mold that grows on grain, esp. types of wheat or rye. Rye in particular has a reputation. A whole towns supply of grain gets wet -- bad rains after harvest -- and everyone catches the ergot poisoning.
The toxins produced by ergot are vasoconstrictors -- they can often choke off blood pumping enough to cause gangrene in the weak / old / sick. Moving a lot, i.e. "dancing" forces the blood to pump harder and keeps your toes from dying from lack of oxygenated blood.
Ergot also contains a precursor to LSD, and is said to correlate with hallucinations. LSD itself was discovered by scientists trying to isolate ergot toxins for medical vasoconstrictor use (e.g. give a small dose to a surgery patient or something to minimize bleeding).
But basically your extremities are desperate for blood and you're tripping balls so you dance, move, etc. just to keep going.
I've heard of the hypothesis it was a fungus infecting the wheat. I don't know what it's called in English, it's Mutterkorn in German. Concidentally (or not?) the precursor substance of LSD is produced by this fungus.
> One of the most prominent theories is that victims suffered from ergot poisoning, which was known as St. Anthony's fire in the Middle Ages. During floods and damp periods, ergots were able to grow and affect rye and other crops. Ergotism can cause hallucinations and convulsions, but cannot account for the other strange behaviour most commonly identified with dancing mania. [1]
> It just seems like we're taking the descriptions we have too literally from an era where medical terminology was often metaphorical
And content creators. I hope I am not the only one who took this plague as a true historical event where people 100% started dancing out of nowhere and died dancing because of scary content I consumed at a younger age like "Top 10 Unexplained Cases Of Mass Hysteria"
The wikipedia page isn't as detailed as I recall. I don't think that physiological disease can totally explain the phenomenon. The building of stages and congregating of dancers together, to me, suggests there was another dimension to the phenomenon.
Humans are highly social animals.. everything is seen is an opportunity for socializing come at least that's the way it was and more tightly bound societies such as we had before today's atomized modern society
There's a tricky linguistic zone where languages are similar enough to modern times that everyone feels like they don't need a "translator", where words may even have similar denotations to today (though there are shifts in those too sometimes), but often have very different connotations. People reading text with modern denotations and connotations for the same word are worse off than if they're presented with a truly foreign text, where they realize they need a translation to do anything.
1518 I'd put on the far side of that zone. If you tried to read a lot of text from that era you'd rapidly realize it's not the same language, as anyone who has been asked to read a parallel-passage Canterbury Tales in school (from even earlier, but 16th century has similar problems) or read Shakespeare, the more original the better, you understand what I'm saying.
But individual phrases from the 16th century can still suffer this effect quite easily.
A very well-known example of the sorts of shifts I'm talking about is the 20th century shift of the word "gay" in the United States. However, that is merely a particularly extreme and well-known example. The entire language is constantly shifting like that. Another one that Terry Pratchett pointed out in one of his Discworld books is we have a quite substantial set of adjectives that have shifted over the years; "awesome" wasn't just "pretty cool", it meant specifically inspiring awe, so "awesome skateboard" is probably not accurate by the original definition, "incredible" wasn't just "pretty cool" but literally meant unbelievable, etc. In fact we've lost rather a lot of specific adjectives to becoming barely shaded variants on "pretty cool"....
Probably the largest impediment to reading older English is the belief that you know what you're reading means, when you in fact may not. If you are ever confused about something you read, consider that you may in fact be reading something a bit slanted relative to what you think you're reading. This also applies, but differently, to ancient non-English texts. Especially in philosophy, there are certain traditional translations of certain old terms that are still generally used today, but the English translation itself has shifted in the intervening centuries... words that may seem as simple as "essence" or "substance" don't remotely mean what you probably think they mean. We'd almost be better off with a transliteration of the original words and allowing readers to form their own understanding of the concepts without 21st century misunderstanding of 17th century English translations getting in the way.
Dunno if there's an official linguistic term for this but if anyone's got it I'd be interested in hearing it.
One of my favorites for this is the term “making love”. In older times, this basically meant wooing or courtship - literally trying to and building feelings of love and affection in another person.
Now, of course, it means sex. Which can make can making reading some older texts very surprising for modern readers!
The euphemisms are full of examples like that. Not only can they confuse you in the way you meant, you can just plain miss them. Just yesterday I learned that "watery knees", when used in the context of being very afraid, doesn't necessarily refer to what I thought it referred to, which was just shakey knees that were as stable as water. It refers to pissing oneself, hence, literally, "water" (itself a common historical euphemism for piss) actually on the knees, as well as everywhere else. I don't know how many times I've seen that without putting that together.
(Pardon the bluntness, but explaining one euphemism with another seems rather pointless.)
In the 500 years since this event happened, you are the first person to think of this as an actual reason. Congrats, we can close the case, finally. Thank goodness for you.
In July 1518, a woman whose name was given as Frau (Mrs.) Troffea (or Trauffea) stepped into the street and began dancing. She seemed unable to stop, and she kept dancing until she collapsed from exhaustion. After resting, she resumed the compulsive frenzied activity. She continued this way for days, and within a week more than 30 other people were similarly afflicted. They kept going long past the point of injury. City authorities were alarmed by the ever-increasing number of dancers. The civic and religious leaders theorized that more dancing was the solution, and so they arranged for guildhalls for the dancers to gather in, musicians to accompany the dancing, and professional dancers to help the afflicted to continue dancing…”
One of the linked papers talks about involuntary trance and the capacity for such a phenomenon to spread through extant systemic stress or fear.
We know humans can be captured or gripped by any number of involuntary phenomena, particularly when it becomes a social effect and in effect reduces individual conscious control in favor of the social locus. So that lens seems fairly valid on its face.
This also took place during extraordinarily harsh times even for that particular point in history. There had been massive floods and damage to crops, with food prices soaring, in addition to newly-spreading syphilis. There was probably a fairly strong unconscious sense of loss of control in the first place.
The idea of mass psychogenic illness is pretty well known and even happens today.
You’ll read about some school where a bad smell comes up, some kid faints and then suddenly the class is on their way to the hospital, only to find out there was no exposure.
The article gives two possible explanations (LSD-like food poisoning, and “mass psychogenic illness”). There’s a chance it could be an elaborate hoax, or misunderstanding.
I was reading about this recently as I was researching the Ghost Dancers of the Midwest Native American tribes of the late 1800s. There were multiple occurrences of dancing or related (sometimes seemingly uncontrollable) movement in religions. Here's a short list I made from James Mooney's book on the Ghost Dancers:
- The dancing epidemic of Saint John, which broke out in Germany, the Netherlands, and France in the 1300s and 1400s.
- The Flagellant movement, which erupted in Italy, France, Germany, Austria, Poland, Denmark, and England in the 1200s and 1300s.
- The Quakers, who early in their history, were known for violently shaking.
- The "Jumpers," a group that started in 1740 in Wales, whose actions Moore notes as most similar to the Ghost dancers of 1870 and 1890. They would repeatedly sing songs while jumping for hours.
- The Shakers. You get the idea from the name.
- The Methodists. Of the groups already mentioned, this was the one I had the least expectation of an early history of followers shaking and falling down in religious ecstasy.
- The Kentucky Revival of 1800, which mostly affected Methodists and Baptists in Kentucky and Tennessee. The promise was that Christ's second coming would be in 1805. At these revival meetings attendees often fell to the ground and rolled around, jerking their body about.
As Mooney said in his book: "The human race is one in thought and action. The systems of our highest civilizations have their counterparts among all the nations, and their chain of parallels stretches backward link by link until we find their origin and interpretation in the customs and rites of our own barbarian ancestors, or of our still existing aboriginal tribes. There is nothing new under the sun."
My childhood was in a Pentecostal church and this would randomly happen with out warning during a service - and when it did the service would run long. Normally I would get out at 12:30 so 11-12 was singing, 10-11 Sunday school and 12-12:30 at best the preaching would end but it was probably 1 in 6 where one could describe is as mass hysteria with loud singing , speaking in tongues and falling to the floor. Those would run and extra hour at least which gave very little time for play being you had to be back there for evening service. 10/10 would not recommend.
Mooney is the best! Wasnt he the first westerner to have a legit psychedelic trip? From peyote. Magic mushrooms were only discovered by westerners in 1957.
I built https://chrono.quest as a fun way to discover weird or anachronistic events from history. If anyone knows of a good list of events like this, please let me know so I can add them!
Might be cool to add instructions on what to do. I landed on that page and was fairly confused as to what I was supposed to do other than read the facts.
Would mis-reported Hare Krishna or Sufi be treated by history similarly?
Not that I think either are comparable, it's what deep time and a lack of other sources on a marginal social trend might look like in future distance which interests me.
As if "midnight express" (1978) was a sole surviving document of life in Middle Eastern prisons, and so defined them.
It seems unlikely, being "foreigner" would have been a significant factor in the report of dance outbreaks in northern Europe, and it's not part of this story.
Most of the dancing Hare Krishna in western society are locals. Btw the point wasn't "these dancers are kare krishna" the point was that history isn't kind to marginal stories with single or a few sources.
That’s very interesting and I remember reading of ergot, but never realised it could give these sort of symptoms nor that it was what LSD had been synthesized from. Thanks for sharing.
a whole lot of stuff has been derived from ergot alkaloids. Albert Hoffmann alone found drugs to help women survive child birth before LSD stole the show.
Sometimes I think about this plague because I have restless leg[1]. It gets really bad sometimes at night to the point that I can't sit still I have to jump around. I take medication for it now and so it's controlled but if I didn't take meds for it it would be a lot harder to deal with.
The reason I think of restless leg in connection with this disease is that, remarkably, modern medicine does not have a definitive answer for the cause of either. I take several pills that doctors have prescribed which I have discovered help with the disease but it is unknown why they do so in some cases.
I get that the disease is complicated, but sometimes I just wonder if these people took an Epsom salt bath if that would have lent some relief.
It's such a coincidence to see this on HN today. I was listening to a podcast about this very phenomenon yesterday (it was an old episode from exactly one year ago, too). If anyone is intrigued, it's https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmvwGymptko – they covered ten different "strange" causes of death, of which the dancing plague was one (and perhaps the least gruesome – the Byford Dolphin one was a real eye opener https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byford_Dolphin).
"Mass hysteria" is not well known or understood and probably a poor choice of words - it is not pathological.
In France in October 2019, 17 students started convulsing without clear logical reason and no poisoning evidence. It was eventually flagged as a new case of "mass hysteria".
This (French) podcast episode[0] captures testimonies from judges, doctors and the mayor of the city to explain how it went, it's mind blowing.
Here is a summary (abstract, translated):
> On 3 October, during a school cross-country race in Morbier, in the Jura, seventeen schoolchildren were taken ill one after the other: nausea, vomiting, convulsions...
> Maelys, a pupil in the third year of secondary school, was excused from running at the last moment because of neck pain. Sitting down, she observes her classmates. The girls in the third grade are the last to pass when the scene suddenly becomes unrealistic: "A friend comes in and suddenly I hear a shout: "She's convulsing!" Another friend falls into the changing room. Another friend comes up to me and says in a panic "I can't feel my legs!" and I see that she is shaking all over her body, her legs don't respond and she yells at me to call the fire brigade. Around us there were already two helicopters."
> Two students are in a "state of absolute emergency", one of them with a "vital prognosis". They are being transported to Besançon hospital.
> The results of the drinking water were in conformity. The food hypothesis was also ruled out. We also suspected drugs and narcotics, but the blood tests and urine analyses revealed nothing. No toxicological cause could explain the event.
> Dominique Parain, a former neurologist at the Rouen University Hospital, read about the incident in the press and recognised the symptoms of a "collective psychogenic syndrome": "First of all, the cross is noted, so there is a favourable ground for stress. Then it appears in a community, in this case a school, and psychogenic syndromes mainly concern girls, as is the case here. Finally, it spreads to the sight, in the manner of a yawn. One person's discomfort causes another's discomfort."
> If the cause is imaginary, the symptoms are very real and would have for origin a temporary dysfunction of the cerebral activity: "The brain's connections are constantly being made and broken, and in adolescence, connectivity explodes. This can lead to discomfort. We believe that certain mental images can disconnect cortical regions, leading to a loss of control and various symptoms."
> Some schoolchildren still find it hard to believe that these spectacular seizures have a purely emotional cause. "Denial is common in this case", says Dominique Parain.
isn't there a fantasy novel about this? it is on the edge of my tongue. bum-faced memory - when you get to my age (nearly 70) you know it is in there, but it is often infuriatingly difficult trying to retrieve it.
In some way could call what is happening now "the great smartphone Plague". Hundred of people staring at a screen, all the Time, and for some, stoping to go out, and believing self-harming social-media driven ideology such as anti-health posture (anti-vax for instance).
Again, I have no proof. It just seems like we're taking the descriptions we have too literally from an era where medical terminology was often metaphorical and made by people with an extremely limited understanding of disease.