In July 1518, something extraordinary happened in Strasbourg (then part of the Holy Roman Empire, now in France). A woman named Frau Troffea began dancing in the street. She danced continuously for days. Within a week, 34 people had joined her. Within a month, approximately 400 people were dancing uncontrollably.
Many danced until they collapsed from exhaustion. Some died from strokes, heart attacks, or sheer fatigue. The Dancing Plague of 1518 remains one of history’s most puzzling mass hysteria events.
The Outbreak
Frau Troffea started dancing in mid-July 1518. No music was playing. She simply began dancing in the street and couldn’t stop. Her feet moved in a frenzied, convulsive manner. She danced for four to six days straight, only stopping when she collapsed from exhaustion.
But when she recovered, she resumed dancing. And others began to join her.
Within a week, 34 people were dancing. By early September, the number had swollen to around 400. The dancers seemed compelled—they danced day and night, barely stopping for food or water. Their feet bled. They begged for help but couldn’t stop moving.
Medical Response
Strasbourg’s authorities were baffled. Local physicians examined the dancers and determined they suffered from “hot blood.” Their proposed cure: more dancing.
Officials hired musicians and built a stage, believing the afflicted would dance themselves to exhaustion and finally stop. This decision likely made things worse. The music and stage may have attracted more dancers and legitimized the behavior.
Theories
What caused the Dancing Plague? Historians and scientists have proposed several explanations:
Ergot Poisoning: Ergot is a fungus that grows on rye and can cause convulsions, hallucinations, and irrational behavior. However, ergot also typically causes vasoconstriction that would make prolonged dancing difficult.
Stress-Induced Mass Psychogenic Illness: Strasbourg in 1518 was experiencing famine, disease, and poverty. Intense stress can manifest as physical symptoms in groups—mass psychogenic illness. The dancing may have been a communal response to unbearable pressure.
Religious Ecstasy: Some historians suggest the dancing was a form of religious frenzy or ecstatic worship, possibly connected to beliefs about St. Vitus, who was thought to inflict dancing curses.
Cultural Context: Dancing manias occurred several times in medieval Europe. Cultural beliefs about dancing curses may have created a template for how people expressed psychological distress.
The End
The plague ended in September 1518, as mysteriously as it began. The dancers were taken to a mountain shrine for healing. Whether through religious intervention or simply the passage of time, the compulsion to dance finally stopped.
Historical records suggest that while most dancers recovered, some died during the outbreak—though exact numbers are disputed.
Legacy
The Dancing Plague of 1518 stands as one of history’s strangest collective behaviors. It reminds us that psychological and social pressures can manifest in bizarre physical ways, and that even today, we don’t fully understand how stress, culture, and biology interact to create mass phenomena.
Similar dancing epidemics occurred in medieval Europe, though the 1518 outbreak was the best-documented. These events reveal how vulnerable humans are to collective psychological states, especially during times of crisis.
The Dancing Plague continues to fascinate because it defies easy explanation. Whether caused by toxins, stress, religious fervor, or some combination, it demonstrates the strange and powerful ways that mind, body, and society can interact—sometimes with fatal results.