The Backstory: Bugs in Your Veins: The Dancing Plague

When there’s an outbreak of some sort, like the flu or COVID, we all wonder if we’re going to get it. But some of us are more compelled to think we’ve actually got it when people around us show symptoms. Now, imagine being overcome with the urge to keep moving your body, as if you have bugs in your veins. There were outbreaks of dancing mania throughout medieval times. It sounds festive but it wasn’t pleasant.

Feel free to DM me if you have a story you’d like me to cover . . on Facebook it’s Patty Steele and on Instagram Real Patty Steele.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
All right, as we get closer to winter, we all
dread the onset of cold and flu season, right? Along
with COVID and a jillion other illnesses that all seem
to thrive in frigid weather. But you got to ask
yourself how people a few hundred years ago or more
dealt with all the illnesses that wiped out thousands of
folks on a regular basis, and they didn't have any

(00:20):
way to treat it. It was heartbreaking. And then there's
the story of a bizarre illness that At first sounds almost,
I don't know, festive. Dancing mania. But then it turns
out to be really dark. I'm Patti Steele, dissecting the
dancing plagues of medieval Europe. That's next on The Backstory.

(00:44):
The Backstory is back. It's that time of year when
folks consider getting, or not getting, all kinds of shots, right?
Flu shots, COVID shots, RSV shots, you name it. But
not everything we can catch actually has a shot that
targets it. That was especially true in centuries past. Now,
consider this. You like to dance? Even if you love it,

(01:06):
can you imagine being overcome with the urge to dance
like crazy and not being able to stop, as though
you had bugs in your veins? This was actually a
thing in medieval Europe, especially in Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands,
and a bit later in France. The first outbreak was
the dancing mania of 1374. It was crazy. It involved

(01:28):
a ton of people who involuntarily started to dance frantically
in Aachen, Germany in June of that year. Before the
summer was out, it was spreading rapidly through towns along
the Rhine River into the Netherlands and then into France.
It sounds like a summer street party, but that wasn't
what it felt like. Hundreds of people formed wild circles

(01:50):
in the streets. They were screaming, foaming at the mouth,
and experiencing terrifying hallucinations, like seeing a red sieve of blood.
They literally jumped until they collapsed from exhaustion. Word is,
many of them danced for hours, days, even weeks, non-stop,
with some dying from heart attacks, strokes, or nasty physical injuries. Weirdly,

(02:12):
reports said the dancers showed extreme fear of the color red,
as well as of pointed shoes. What's that about? A
number of them wrapped tight cloth around their bodies or
even had their arms and legs beaten and squeezed to
get some temporary relief. About 150 years later, there was
another outbreak in the city of Strasbourg. It was July

(02:34):
of 1518. A woman called Frau Trothia started to dance. Now,
think about it. Imagine waking up one morning, walking out
into the street, and suddenly you find yourself dancing. Not
because you're happy, not because there's music, but dancing because,
for reasons nobody can explain, your body just won't stop.

(02:54):
Within a month, at least 400 other people in the
town joined in. It was a time when people had
very little in the way of knowledge about how our
bodies and brains truly function. That was part of the problem. Now,
in the case of Strasbourg, politicians and town officials thought
that the victim's just needed to shake it off by
dancing it out. So they literally set up guild halls

(03:17):
for the dancers. They even hired professional pipe and drum
players and actual professional dancers to keep the dance victims inspired.
Problem is, instead of curing the problem, their strategy may
have made it worse because more people began dancing. So
why was this happening? Well, at the time, authorities often

(03:38):
blamed demonic possession or a curse from St. John or St. Vitus,
so priests were sent in to attempt exorcisms with holy water.
Some modern-day sociologists say the dancing plague could have been
caused by a fungus similar to LSD in the stores
of the town's wheat supply, thus the hallucinations and muscle spasms.

(03:59):
In any event, people were clearly terrified. Keep in mind,
in those medieval and post-medieval times, Folks across Europe were
dealing with famine, disease, devastating floods, and the belief that
supernatural forces could force them to dance. In the case
of Germany in 1374, the area was suffering from the

(04:21):
aftermath of another terrifying plague, the Black Death, primarily bubonic plague.
It killed 60% of Europe's population, as many as 50
million people in just seven years. That's a lot to
be terrified of. Other historians today call it a case
of mass hysteria. The trauma, anxiety, and fear, and watching

(04:42):
the uncontrollable movements of people in the streets could have
caused a psychosomatic response, maybe sending some into a trance
state to keep dancing endlessly. The symptoms aren't necessarily fake.
People can genuinely feel that something is happening to them.
And the various outbreaks of dancing plague over the course

(05:03):
of almost a thousand years have been traced back to
times of extreme stress in Europe, Africa, and Asia. Again,
that doesn't mean people were pretending. It means our minds
and bodies can interact in really powerful ways. It can
come down to expectation. If everybody around you thinks that
a mysterious dancing illness is spreading, you might become intensely

(05:26):
focused on every weird sensation in your body. Ooh, there
was a twitch, a muscle spasm, a feeling of dizziness.
A strange impulse. And suddenly, the behavior begins. In Strasbourg,
as the epidemic grew, authorities decided to change up their strategy.
Instead of encouraging the dancers, they now tried to suppress it.

(05:49):
Dance floors were closed. Musicians and professional dancers lost their
temporary gigs. And folks were taken to religious sites to
ask for spiritual help. So, gradually, the outbreak disappeared. Now,
the thing is, modern medicine tells us that the brain
can produce very real physical symptoms. Stress can cause tremors.

(06:11):
Fear can cause rapid heartbeats. Anxiety can produce dizziness, nausea,
and shortness of breath. And under some circumstances, groups of
people can develop similar unexplained symptoms. So rather than a curse,
maybe the dancers were the victims of something much more human. Fear. Stress. hunger, disease,

(06:34):
religious belief, and the extraordinary power of suggestion. Sometimes the
strangest stories in history aren't about monsters, ghosts, killers, or
supernatural forces. Sometimes they're about something way more mysterious, the
human mind. I hope you like the backstory with Patti Steele.

(06:54):
Please leave a review. I'd love it if you'd subscribe
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And feel free to DM me if you have a
story you'd like me to cover. On Facebook, it's Patty Steele.
And on Instagram, Real Patty Steele. I'm Patty Steele. The

(07:16):
Backstory is a production of iHeartMedia, Premier Networks, The Elvis
Duran Group, and Steel Trap Productions. Our producer is Mike Peseglia.
Our writer is Jake Kushner. New episodes are out every
Tuesday and Friday, and feel free to reach out to
me with comments and story suggestions on Instagram at Real
Patty Steele and on Facebook at Patty Steele. Thanks for

(07:38):
listening to The Backstory with Patty Steele, the pieces of
history you didn't know you needed to know.