The Dancing Plague of 1518
In 1518, dancing briefly became a contagious disease.
In Strasbourg, a woman began dancing in the street and couldn’t stop. Within a month, dozens - by some accounts hundreds - had joined, some reportedly dancing to collapse. Leading explanations include stress-induced mass psychogenic illness; ergot poisoning is a popular but weaker theory. Nobody knows for certain.
Where this thought can lead
- ↳ Mass psychogenic illness is realThe dancing plague is the poster case for a real, documented phenomenon: distress spreading through bodies like a rumor.
- ↳ Nostalgia was a medical diagnosisSame era of medicine, adjacent move: doctors once filed emotions and behaviors under disease.
- ↳ Earworms: songs your brain won’t releaseLoose but real link: your motor system responds to rhythm whether you authorize it or not.
- ↳ Why unsolved things hijack your brainTangent - the event is long over; the itch of but WHY is fully present tense.
- ↳ The Straw Hat Riot of 1922Strasbourg caught dancing; New York caught hat-smashing. Whatever spreads behavior through a crowd doesn’t check the century first.