The Dancing Plague of 1518 Quiz

The Dancing Plague of 1518 occurred in Strasbourg, France and lasted from July to September; around 50-400 people took to dancing for weeks. The outbreak began when a woman began to dance fervently, and it is not known why. Historical sources agree that there was an outbreak of dancing after a single woman started dancing, and the dancing did not seem to die down. The event lasted so long that it attracted the attention of the Strasbourg magistrate and bishop, and some doctors ultimately intervened, putting the afflicted in a hospital. The only way to cure the bite was to "shimmy" and to have the right sort of music available, which was an accepted remedy by scholars like Athanasius Kircher. There is controversy over whether people ultimately danced to their deaths. Some believe the dancing could have been brought on by food poisoning caused by the toxic and psychoactive chemical products of ergot fungi, which grow commonly on grains used for baking bread. Others believe it could have been an example of fully developed cases of psychogenic movement disorder happening in mass hysteria or mass psychogenic illness. The event inspired the 2022 choral song "Choreomania" by Florence and the Machine.