The town hired performers to help the dancers get it out of their system, so to speak. Those in the grain market and horse fair kept dancing under the full glare of the summer sun in a scene as demonically outlandish as anything imagined by Hieronymus Bosch. Those who became convinced that demons had entered their souls were prone to fall into dissociative states in which they did exactly what theologians and exorcists said the diabolically possessed do. She danced all day long and then some, continuing for an unimaginable six days straight — without music or rest — before stopping. In such cases, the possession trance also spread to witnesses who shared the same theological fears. Just as improbable is the claim that the dancers were religious subversives. One particular idea appears to have lodged in the cultural consciousness of the region: that St Vitus could punish sinners by making them dance. And about a century ago, roughly 75 million died from the Spanish flu pandemic over about a two year period. Within a week, dozens more had been seized by the same irresistible urge. They ordered the clearing of an open-air grain market, commandeered guild halls, and erected a stage next to the horse fair. Investigators in the 20th century suggested that the afflicted might have consumed bread made from rye flour contaminated with the fungal disease ergot , … 0. As the History Channel notes, “before long, some three-dozen other Strasbourgeois had joined in” during that six-day period. © 2020 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies. We can be more confident, I think, in saying what did and did not cause this strange phenomenon. The most credible explanation, in my view, is that the people of Strasbourg were the victims of mass psychogenic illness, what used to be called “mass hysteria”. There seemed to be no end in sight the days ticked by. The reason for the misnomer: World War I. Social and religious conflicts, terrifying new diseases, harvest failures and spiking wheat prices caused widespread misery.
No, it wasn’t a joke either. Almost 150 years earlier in 1374 dozens of towns in the valley of the river Rhine were affected by a similar malady that caused hundred of … A chronicler described 1517 with poignant brevity as a “bad year”. Feel free to submit interesting articles, tell us about this cool book you just read, or start a discussion about who everyone's favorite figure of minor French nobility is! In the decade before the dancing plague of 1518, famine, sickness and terrible cold caused widespread despair in Strasbourg and its environs (Rapp, 1974). Their visibility ensured that other cityfolk were rendered susceptible as their minds dwelt on their own sins and the possibility that they might be next. Available for everyone, funded by readers.
Make sure to familiarize yourself with our rules and guidelines before participating. The curse of St Vitus is just the kind of supernaturalist belief that can drive the suggestible into dissociative states. Seldom stopping to eat or drink, and seemingly oblivious to mounting fatigue and the pain of bruised feet, they were still going days later. Epidemics are no laughing matter. What caused it? In the following weeks, say the chronicles, most ceased their wild movements. By the time the authorities intervened, hundreds more were dancing in the same frenetic fashion. Finally, the dancers were taken to a shrine dedicated to St Vitus, located in a musty grotto in the hills above the nearby town of Saverne, where their bloodied feet were placed into red shoes and they were led around a wooden figurine of the saint. But this didn’t help and, arguably, backfired, attracting even more dancers to the plagued area. Waller’s theory is interesting, and quite a bit more plausible than other theories, including one that it was caused by ergot fungus, the organic version of LSD.