A Brief History
On June 24, 1374, the German city of Aachen experienced a sudden outbreak of St. John’s Dance, a bizarre condition where masses of people experience hallucinations, jump and twitch (dance) until they fell from exhaustion! And this fiasco was not the only time or place.
Digging Deeper
The Aachen incident seems to have spread across Europe that year and into the next two years, affecting many other cities. Italy had their own brand of this disorder that they called “tarantism” where the dancers, presumably bit by a tarantula spider, would dance off the poison by dancing a “tarantella.”
The Aachen incident was one of the first, or possibly the first, major incident, although cases dating back to the 7th Century are known. Other cities across Europe were affected, notably Strasbourg in 1518. In Strasbourg, the mania had started with only one woman, but others joined in over the next few days and within a month, about 400 people were dancing around uncontrollably! Several people died from this activity in Strasbourg, presumably of heart attack or exhaustion.
The mental giants of Strasbourg figured they should let the dancers work through the mania by dancing it off, and musicians were paid to keep them going until they could no longer dance. A pair of guild halls, a grain market and a stage were made available for this purpose. Some of the afflicted were transported to shrines to pray away the dance craze.
An incident in 1278 resulted in a bridge over the Meuse River (Germany) collapsing from a throng of affected dancers. The uncontrolled dancing outbreaks seem to have stopped quickly in the 17th Century and have not occurred since.
Modern scientists call the affliction “choreomania” and other names that have been used are St. Vitus’ Dance, Syndenham Chorea, and Dancing Plague. Back in the day, people commonly blamed a curse sent by a saint (apparently not such a nice saint), and other explanations have been “collective hysteria” or “collective mental disorder.” Treatments besides dancing off the attack included exorcism, tying people up or conducting mock sword fights to burn off energy.
Today, although much documentation is available from the past incidents, scientist are not sure if the phenomenon was caused by real illness or some sort of stress relief response. Others think the incidents may have been staged, perhaps by religious cults or grain contaminated with ergot, or even the old standby, mass hysteria.
Question for students (and subscribers): What do you think caused this goofy behavior? Was it legitimate? Was it staged? Tell us what you think about it in the comments section below this article.
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Waller, John. The Dancing Plague: The Strange, True Story of an Extraordinary Illness. Sourcebooks, 2009.
<span class="dsq-postid" data-dsqidentifier="2701 http://www.crackedhistory.com/?p=2701">27 Comments
This is crazy! I would love to have seen this first hand
I think at the time, people heard of this condition and then thought they had it as well. I don’t think it was staged or a legitimate illness
An illness that makes you dance….. Sounds too good to be true. I agree with Sammi in the fact that people saw it and thought they had it too.
At first I thought this was a satirical article! Hard to believe.
This would have been quite the sight. How many dancers does it take to knock down a bridge?
This illness sounds like a spell out of a Disney film, hard to believe it truly happened.
This dance reminds me of Superstar (Will Ferral movie) where this dance is what killed her parents! Also, it would have been a sight to watch a bridge to fall from dancers!
This seems unbelievable
It would certainly be one of the most interesting illnesses to catch.
Crazy how this could happen
People back in these times are crazy lol. Since I find it hard to believe it actually happened
The best part about this article is how to combat the illness…”mock sword fights.” That’s one I’ve never heard before.
I do not think that this was an actual illness.
Maybe it was not an actual illness, but it seems kind of absurd to fake such a thing, especially if it put you at risk for death?? I do have to say that it would be an interesting way to go out…
I liked the video about the tarantula bite and how to dance out the venom.
The various disease are very interesting to here about and learn. I find it hard to believe it happened.
This is a tough one to try and diagnose. Mad Cow disease, Volcanic gasses, disco fever, bad absinthe… I don’t really know what to say.
I am not sure that this is a real illness, but I would not mind having an illness that would make you dance. Sounds like more people need this in their life to make them happy instead of downers all the time, just a though though.
It seems a little far-fetched to be categorized as an actual illness, but I would not mind dancing more!! Life gets so stressful sometimes!
Its interesting to hear about the different diseases, some that still exist today
I can’t imagine having this disease. To be uncontrollably dancing until your body was simply too weak to move anymore would be exhausting.
This seems too weird and dumb to be a legitimate illness.
This just sounds like these people where mentally ill !
So they would purposely allow a tarantula to bite them to perform this dance ? Odd.
Tarantula bites? For dancing? No thanks.
i hate tarantulas and dancing
to me this sounds like they all collectively were having mental problems. that or an illness and disease they were not able to detect due to it being back in the day had made everyone sick with these weird symptoms.