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On this day in 1374, the city of Aachen in the Holy Roman Empire experienced the strangest of occurrences--a phenomenon in which men, women, and children danced erratically uncontrollably. In this thread we will go through the history of Dancing mania, aka Dancing plague.
The earliest known outbreak of the mania occurred in the 7th century, reappearing across Europe as late as the 17th century when it abruptly ended. One early incident occurred in the 1020s when 18 peasants began singing/dancing around a church, disrupting a Christmas Eve service.
In 1237, a large group of children traveled ~20km from Erfurt to Arnstad, dancing and jumping the whole way. This incident occurred around the same time the famous legend "Pied Piper of Hamelin" originated.
In an incident in 1278, about 200 people danced on a bridge over the River Meuse in Germany, resulting in the bridge's collapse. Many of the survivors were restored to full health at a nearby chapel dedicated to St. Vitus (the Dancing Plague was once called St. Vitus' Dance).
On June 24, 1374, one of the largest outbreaks of the mania occured in Aachen before spreading to several other cities across Germany, Italy, and Luxemburg. This wave would spread across France and Holland throughout 1375 and 1376. More individual occurrences occurred til 1428.
Another famous incident occurred in July 1518 in Strasbourg. Called the Dancing Plague of 1518, it began when a woman began dancing in the streets. Four days later, 33 other joined in and within a month there were 400. Many suffered heart attacks and died.
Mania continued for another century, professor of medicine Gregor Horst recorded "Several women... dance madly all day and all night until they collapse in ecstasy. [o]ne of these women is said to have danced every year for the past twenty years, another for a full thirty-two.
The true cause of this craze remains unknown, though theories include possible poisonings from fungi or insects. The 1374 outbreak occurred only decades after the Black Death, and dancers were treated in the same way--isolation.
