Dancing and Laughing Plagues
The nature of the past isn't always what it seems.
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This is a riff on a History Facts post from March 2025
Dancing mania (AKA dancing plague, choreomania, St. John’s Dance, tarantism, St. Vitus’ Dance) a phenomenon with possible biological causes, occurred primarily in mainland Europe between the 14th and 17th Centuries. There had been many reported outbreaks of “dancing plagues” around the Holy Roman Empire; the earliest in the 7th Century.
One of the earliest occurred in the 1020s in Bernburg, Germany, where peasants began singing and dancing around a church, disturbing a Christmas Eve service. In 1237, a large group of children traveled the 12 miles (20 km) from Erfurt to Arnstadt while jumping and dancing (the Pied Piper of Hamelin story originated at about the same time).
The first major outbreak of the mania occurred between 1373 and 1374 in England, Germany, and the Netherlands. On 24 June 1374, one of the biggest outbreaks began in Aachen before spreading to Cologne, Flanders, Franconia, Hainaut, Metz, Strasbourg, Tongeren, Utrecht, Italy and Luxemburg. Further episodes occurred in 1375 and 1376, with incidents in France, Germany, and the Netherlands, and in 1381, there was an outbreak in Augsburg. Further incidents occurred in 1418 in Strasbourg, where people fasted for days; this one may have been brought on by exhaustion. In 1428 in Schaffhausen, a monk danced to death and, in the same year, a group of women in Zürich were reportedly in a dancing frenzy.
Up to 400 people were struck by a “dancing plague” in Strasbourg in what is now France. This well-documented episode began in July 1518 when Frau Troffea spontaneously began boogying away in the middle of the street. She danced alone and continuously for an entire week before between 50 and 100 people joined her. By month’s end, the number had grown to several hundred. As the weeks went on, several dancers collapsed from exhaustion, and some suffered fatal heart attacks. The mysterious dancing eventually waned, and Strasbourg returned to normalcy in September. Further incidents occurred in the 16th Century when the mania was at its peak. The 1536 Basel outbreak involved a group of children. A 1551 occurrence in Anhalt involved just one man.
Hot blood, curses, contaminated grain?
Contemporary observers attributed these incidents to "hot blood" and suggested dancing continued until the urge disappeared. Some feared St. Vitus, the patron saint of dance, had cursed them, or spirits possessed them, or the bite of the tarantula affected them. Modern historians posit that stress, coupled with the rise of new and untreated diseases such as syphilis, likely induced this mass hysteria. Another theory points to a fungus known as ergot (Claviceps purpurea), sometimes found on bread. Ergot poisoning (ergotism) occurs when someone consumes grains or medications with toxins from the fungus. The fungus causes convulsions if consumed, and while rare today because of grain screening, it historically caused mass outbreaks and may have been responsible for uncontrollable dancing and other instances of mass panic.
A laughter epidemic ?
On 30 January 1962, three girls at an all-girl boarding school in Kashasha on Lake Victoria in Tanganyika began laughing hysterically out of nowhere. The epidemic soon spread throughout the school, affecting 95 of the 159 pupils, aged 12 to 18. Symptoms lasted from a few hours to 16 days, averaging around 7 days. Teachers and other staff were unaffected; the school closed, but the epidemic spread to Nshamba, where several of the school’s girls lived. In April and May 1962, 217 young villagers had laughing attacks. In June, the laughing epidemic spread to a Ramashenye girls’ middle school, affecting 48 girls. The effects also reached additional schools and Kanyangereka. The phenomenon died off 18 months after it started. All areas affected were within a 100-mile radius of Bukoba. In the end, there were no fatalities, though this mysterious event shut down 14 schools and affected 1,000 people.
The power of the mob and the media.
Mass psychogenic illness (MPI), also called mass sociogenic illness, mass psychogenic disorder, epidemic hysteria or mass hysteria, involves the rapid spread of illness signs and symptoms affecting members of a cohesive group, originating from a nervous system disturbance involving excitation, loss, or alteration of function, where physical complaints that are exhibited unconsciously have no known corresponding organic causes.
While ergot may have been responsible for dancing mania, the laughing plague that struck in Africa has no similar theories attached. It might be important that only young women were affected there, as MPI usually affects younger females, manifesting commonly in headaches. Researchers looking into these events say the earliest studied cases linked with epidemic hysteria are the dancing manias.
However, there’s another cause documented by scholars under another name: social contagion, exacerbated by mass and social media. After the rise of a popular breakthrough YouTube channel in 2019, where the presenter exhibits extensive Tourette’s-like behavior, there was a sharp rise in young people referred to clinics specializing in tics, thought to be related to social contagion spread via the Internet, and also to stress from the COVID-19 pandemic.
A report published in August 2021 showed that social media was the primary way the Tourette’s-like behavior spread, and this report called the phenomenon the first recorded instance of mass social media–induced illness (MSMI) made worse by photophobia-related epilepsy.
Physical symptoms, psychological effects, and the evidence by inference.
While dancing plagues have a plausible explanation, the laughing plague does not, merely a suggested pattern. Thoughtful scholars must look to both science and history to solve the puzzles of human behavior—the historian’s meat. Mysteries such as the laughing plague may remain mysteries, explained only by observing patterns. If social media—today’s boogyman for several reasons—makes people sick, the historian can’t look away and say, “that’s politics” when it isn’t. Nor can we dismiss the possibility that bored young women in Tanzania simply instigated the laughing plague to challenge adults.
We do not write history by simply recounting events and citing evidence. We often need heaping helpings of logic and skepticism.
The Past Not Taken: Three Novellas
Making assumptions about how past events came about is one of the most dangerous habits any scholar has to break. Making assumptions about sources is another. In these first Curtis Durand stories, he learns to do neither, while learning many do.
This, too, is how history books are written.
And Finally...
On 28 February:
1917: The Wilson administration releases the text of the Zimmerman Telegram to newspapers in the United States. Transmitted to the German Ambassadors to Mexico and Japan on 17 January by Arthur Zimmerman, both British and American intelligence had intercepted it, proposing an alliance between Germany, Mexico, and Japan. Historians often cite the telegram as a key cause of the US entry into WII.
1953: James Watson and Francis Crick announce their double-helix model of the structure of DNA to their colleagues at the University of Cambridge, England. Their paper, published in the journal Nature that April, won them and their colleague Maurice Wilkins renown and Nobel Prizes in 1962, also catapulting Rosalind Franklin’s x-ray diffraction images into the spotlight (Franklin died in 1958; there is no provision for posthumous Nobels).
And today is the first of two NATIONAL TOOTH FAIRY DAY observances each year; the other is 22 August. The creator, children’s author Katie Davis, probably figured the kids she created it for needed more than one reminder to take care of their choppers.