The dancing plague of 1518

In July 1518 a woman recorded as Frau Troffea began dancing in the street in Strasbourg and did not stop. Within days more than thirty people were dancing with her, and over about three months somewhere between 50 and 400 were taken. The authorities decided the cure was more dancing: they refurbished guild halls to hold the dancers and hired musicians to keep them going. When that plainly made it worse they banned public dancing and music, and sent the dancers to the shrine of Saint Vitus in red shoes blessed with holy water; the outbreak ended when the last of them were walked up to a chapel on a mountain. Some accounts claim fifteen deaths a day at the peak, but Strasbourg’s own documents record no deaths at all, so the toll is unknown. Ergot poisoning is the popular explanation and John Waller argues against it, since the affected danced far too long and too widely for a contaminated grain supply. Mass psychogenic illness, in a year of famine and disease, is the other reading.