Not Another History Podcast
We are Cindy and Katie, and every two weeks we bring you a random theme and offer several of our favorite historical events loosely based on that theme. We are basically just living out our old lady fantasies of rocking on the front porch together, drinking, and gossiping about people who are already dead. Music: The Life of a Divorced Bumblebee by Josef Bel Habib (www.epidemicsound.com). Design: canva.com
Not Another History Podcast
9 Ladies Dancing
In honor of the holiday season, we are re-releasing our 12 Days of Christmas special! For the next 12 days, we will re-release one episode a day, each one with our own spin on the classic holiday theme, "The 12 Days of Christmas."
Katie shares the story of the Dancing Plague of 1518.
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.
Speaker 2:I hear it was really contagious.
Speaker 1:It really makes you start to fear songs like the Rhythm Is Gonna Get Ya.
Speaker 2:Saturday.
Speaker 1: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.
Speaker 2: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.
Speaker 1: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.
Speaker 2:Not by choice. They just had a tune in their head and they just couldn't get it out.
Speaker 1:No, not at all.
Speaker 1:It started with one individual woman who just began to dance uncontrollably and she was joined in by allegedly a group of young women.
Speaker 1: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.
Speaker 2: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?
Speaker 1: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.
Speaker 2:Wait a minute, and what kind of dancing were they doing? They're just moving.
Speaker 1: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?
Speaker 1: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?
Speaker 2:bit crazy. It was Salem witch trials.
Speaker 1: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.
Speaker 2: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.
Speaker 1:Yes, or adopted way too many plants.
Speaker 2: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.
Speaker 1: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.
Speaker 1: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.
Speaker 2: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?
Speaker 1: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.
Speaker 2: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.
Speaker 1:I need to dance all my cares away, my cares away.
Speaker 2:So have we seen the dance plague?
Speaker 1: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.
Speaker 2:But not because of the dancing.
Speaker 1: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. 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.
Speaker 2:I'll try not to Thanks for watching.