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Q65: What event are scientists still unable to explain?

by: Vitmor Gomes

Hi.

Here's an event that happened 500 years ago, that still puzzles scientists, historians, and anyone who wants to understand it.

In July 1518, in the town of Strasbourg, Alsace (now France), something unexpected happened.

A housewife, called Frau Troffea, came out of her home onto the street and started dancing. People found it odd, including her husband, but no one gave it much attention.

She literally danced all day only stopping when she fell asleep due to exhaustion. The next morning, as soon as she woke up, she started dancing again.

This time people did pay attention as this was highly unusual, and they formed a crowd around her to see her dance to no music. At this point, her feet were already bruised and bloodied but she didn't appear to be willing to stop.

But, within the next 4 days, something even weirder started happening. 34 people also started dancing non-stop.

Within 4 weeks it is believed that up to 400 people were dancing uncontrollably.

Those who weren't affected had no idea what to do as they saw their dancing neighbors screaming in pain and begging for help, seemingly not being able to stop their killer moves.

Because it was summer at the time, up to 15 people a day were dying because of the heat, dehydration, and exhaustion.

The city council asked for the help of local physicians to try and stop this madness and eventually they diagnosed the poor dancers with "hot blood".

"Hot blood" meant that the brain was overheated, which caused madness. But they couldn't use their remedy, bloodletting, since people couldn't stop moving for long enough to have a bit of their blood drained.

So the council decided to try something else.

They hired musicians and brought more people into the town in order to have a party and try to tire the dancers out.

It seemed to be working as the dancer's moves were slowing down, but the hired musicians decided to change the pace and play a more upbeat song, causing the villagers to once again, get back on the previous groove.

Seeing that this wasn't working they decided that this wasn't a case of "hot blood", it was something far worse . . . it was a curse on the city. A curse put upon it because of all the sinners in it.

So the council decided to take action. They closed down all gambling houses and brothels and they banished all those, who they considered being a sinner, from the city.

They were so desperate that they even made music and dancing illegal.

But, as you probably expected, this did nothing to stop those bloodied and bruised feet from dancing.

This lasted all the way till September.

To this day it's still not known what caused this, even though there are some theories such as mass hysteria brought on due to extreme poverty and the superstitions surrounding St. Vitus, whom they believed had cursed them.

And surprisingly enough, this happened quite a few times, all throughout Europe. There were similar outbreaks in 1247, 1278, 1375, 1381, 1428, and probably more that weren't documented.

There were cases where people not only danced but had delusions and cases where the afflicted were all children.

It's been centuries since the last reported case of The Dancing Plague, but it's still scary to think about since there isn't any explanation as to why it happened to this day.

Thank you for reading.