5. Affecting hundreds of residents of Strasbourg and resulting in numerous fatalities, the “dancing plague” caused afflicted persons to dance continuously until they dropped from exhaustion
A most bizarre incident from history, reputedly beginning in July 1518 when a woman, Mrs. Troffea, started frantically dancing in a street in Strasbourg, within a week a further thirty-four others had joined in with the inexplicable activity. Continuing to dance unceasingly, after a month contemporary accounts record a crowd of around four hundred, predominantly female, dancers on the streets. Claiming the lives of some involved, with one chronicler asserting around fifteen people per day were killed by the so-called “dancing plague”, most likely from heart attacks, strokes, or exhaustion, local physicians were at a loss to explain the ongoing epidemic affecting the town.
Causing mass panic, rather than prescribing the usual treatment of bleeding, civic authorities instead encouraged more dancing in the hopes people would tire themselves out. Hiring musicians and setting up stages, this plan was a disaster and simply augmented the size of the hysterical dancing crowds. Ending as suddenly as it began, concluding after a period of just over a month, several modern theories have been suggested for the incredible occurrence. Ranging from mass food poisoning following consumption of psychoactive fungi, most likely ergot which contains structural similarities to LSD, to stress-induced psychosis, and even mass hysteria, it is unlikely a precise explanation will ever be provided for the lethal dancing plague.