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The Dancing Plague of 1518
In mid July 1518, a woman named Frau Troffea stepped into a street in Strasbourg and began dancing. She danced for days without rest. Within a week thirty four others had joined her. Within a month the number had reached four hundred. Physicians examined them and, rejecting the supernatural explanation, recommended more dancing. The city authorities hired musicians and cleared a hall. Some participants danced until their feet bled. Some danced until their hearts gave out. The plague lasted approximately two months and then stopped.


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Many hundreds were seized with the dancing sickness. They danced day and night until they collapsed, and some did not rise again.


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The explanations
Historian John Waller has argued the outbreak was a stress induced mass psychogenic illness, triggered by the grinding misery of the period and a folk belief that Saint Vitus could curse people with compulsive dancing. Ergot poisoning, a fungal contamination of rye that causes convulsions, has been proposed but does not produce coordinated movement. No explanation is fully satisfying.


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At least ten other dancing plagues are recorded in Europe between the 10th and 17th centuries. Strasbourg in 1518 is the best documented.
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Ergotism, the most commonly cited physical cause, produces spasms and hallucinations. It does not produce rhythmic dance movements sustained over weeks.


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What drove four hundred people to dance until some of them died?
Mass psychogenic illness triggered by collective stress
A toxic contamination not yet identified
A form of religious ecstasy that the historical record has flattened
Keep it open

:LINK
https://www.google.com/search?q=Dancing+Plague+1518+Strasbourg+history
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