Dance of Madness Strikes Strasbourg Streets

A peculiar and uncontrollable mass movement gripped the city of Strasbourg in the summer of 1518 when dozens of residents began dancing in the streets without any apparent reason or music. Historians estimate that by the peak of the episode between July and September, anywhere from 50 to 400 individuals were participating in this phenomenon known as the “dancing plague”.

The event reportedly began when a woman identified as Frau Troffea stepped outside her home and commenced vigorous dancing, unable or unwilling to stop. Within a week she was joined by others, and civic authorities, alarmed by the mounting numbers, initially sought to control it by hiring musicians and setting up a stage in the belief that structured dance could relieve the compulsion. That strategy proved counter-productive as more people joined the dancing.

City records of the time indicate a high level of distress among the populace: the region was said to be suffering famine, disease outbreaks and economic hardship, all of which may have contributed to psychosocial pressure on the community. Some scholars interpret the dancing craze as a form of mass psychogenic illness triggered by the combination of environmental stressors and religious belief.

Medical explanations proposed for the phenomenon have ranged from ergot poisoning to chorea-type neurological disorders and religiously-driven trance states. Some proponents of the ergot theory point to the presence of contaminated grain in the region, while sceptics argue that such poisoning would not sustain continuous dancing for days.

Contemporary physicians in 1518 had little framework to comprehend the outbreak. Some suggested that afflicted individuals had “overheated blood” or were under the curse of St. Vitus, patron saint of dancers and epileptics. Others recommended giving sufferers more room and rhythm to dance their affliction away, a response that in retrospect exacerbated the spread rather than containing it.

Modern historians analysing the incident highlight that the cassette of explanations reflects the intersection of culture, religion, economics and public health in early-modern Europe. Some emphasise that the city authorities’ decision to formalise the dance gatherings effectively turned the event into a spectacle, amplifying its reach beyond what might otherwise have been a small isolated flare-up.

Despite the dramatic character of the episode, the exact number of deaths remains contested. Some historical accounts claim that up to fifteen people died per day at the height of the dancing, succumbing to exhaustion, stroke or heart attack. Other archival evidence casts doubt on such figures, noting the absence of explicit death records in municipal documents of the era.

Researchers point to comparable instances of dancing mania across Europe from the thirteenth to seventeenth centuries, but the 1518 Strasbourg case stands out for the scale of documentation and the longevity of the movement. Scholars describe the event as likely the last major node of such mania in Western Europe.

In terms of human impact, the dancing plague offers a crisp window into how communities in crisis may manifest distress in physical-behavioural form when traditional medical and cultural systems fail to account for unexplained symptoms. For historians of medicine and social science alike, it underlines the capacity of sociocultural stress to produce real physiological and communal phenomena.