Death by Dancing!!

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And you thought rave-parties were bad...


Dancing Mania

"Dancing mania (also known as dancing plague) was a social phenomenon that occurred primarily in mainland Europe between the 14th and 17th centuries. It involved groups of people dancing erratically, sometimes thousands at a time. The mania affected men, women, and children, who danced until they collapsed from heart attacks, stroke, or exhaustion.

One of the first major outbreaks was in Aachen
, Germany, in 1374, and it quickly spread throughout Europe; one particularly notable outbreak occurred in Strasbourg in 1518. Affecting thousands of people across several centuries, dancing mania was not an isolated event, and was well documented in contemporary reports. It was nevertheless poorly understood, and remedies were based on guesswork. Generally, musicians accompanied dancers, to help ward off the mania, but this tactic sometimes backfired by encouraging more to join in. There is no consensus among modern-day scholars as to the cause of dancing mania

One of the biggest outbreaks occurred in July 1518, in Strasbourg (see Dancing Plague of 1518), where a woman named Frau Troffea began dancing in the street; within four days she had been joined by 33 others, and within a month there were 400, many of whom suffered heart attacks and died. Further incidents occurred during the 16th century, when the mania was at its peak: in 1536 in Basel, involving a group of children; and in 1551 in Anhalt, involving just one man. In the 17th century, incidents of recurrent dancing were recorded by professor of medicine Gregor Horst, who noted:

The earliest known outbreak of dancing mania occurred in the 7th century, and it reappeared many times across Europe until about the 17th century, when it stopped abruptly. One of the earliest known incidents occurred sometime in the 1020s in Bernburg, where 18 peasants began singing and dancing around a church, disturbing a Christmas Eve service. Further outbreaks occurred during the 13th century, including one in 1237 in which a large group of children travelled from Erfurt to Arnstadt, jumping and dancing all the way, in marked similarity to the legend of the Pied Piper of Hamelin.








Another incident, in 1278, involved about 200 people dancing on a bridge over the River Meuse in Germany, resulting in its collapse. Many of the survivors were restored to full health at a nearby chapel dedicated to St Vitus.The first major outbreak of the mania occurred between 1373 and 1374, with incidents reported in England, Germany and the Netherlands. On 24 June 1374, one of the biggest outbreaks began in Aix-la-Chapelle, Aachen (Germany),before spreading to other places such as Cologne, Flanders, Franconia, Hainaut, Metz, Strasbourg, Tongeren, Utrecht, and to countries such as Italy and Luxembourg.

Further episodes occurred in 1375 and 1376, with incidents in France, Germany and Holland,and in 1381 there was an outbreak in Augsburg. Further incidents occurred in 1418 in Strasbourg, where people fasted for days and the outbreak was possibly caused by exhaustion.In another outbreak, in 1428 in Schaffhausen, a monk danced to death and, in the same year, a group of women in Zurich were reportedly in a dancing frenzy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dancing_mania

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dancing_Plague_of_1518
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(2017-09-16, 05:39 PM)Pollux Wrote: And you thought rave-parties were bad...


Dancing Mania







Edit: *snip* shortened the quote

I just listened to that video, Pollux, quite bizarre. I don't remember ever hearing about this. I wonder what was significant about the colour red and pointy shoes.
(This post was last modified: 2017-09-16, 08:14 PM by Pollux.)
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(2017-09-16, 06:45 PM)tim Wrote: I just listened to that video, Pollux, quite bizarre. I don't remember ever hearing about this. I wonder what was significant about the colour red and pointy shoes.

More from the Wiki article:

Quote:Participants demonstrated odd reactions to the colour red; in A History of Madness in Sixteenth-Century Germany, Midelfort notes they "could not perceive the color red at all",[5]:32 and Bartholomew reports "it was said that dancers could not stand... the color red, often becoming violent on seeing [it]". Bartholomew also notes that dancers "could not stand pointed shoes", and that dancers enjoyed their feet being hit.

That bit me think about the Hans Christian Andersen tale The Red Shoes about the girl forced to dance in pair of them, later adapted into this movie:



---
Psychological theory.
Skeptical Inquirer article.

This article links this phenomenon to other more recent unexplained "mass hysterias", like the Tanganyika laughter epidemic of 1962:
Quote:an outbreak of mass hysteria in Tanzania in which uncontrollable laughter, accompanied by fainting, respiratory problems, and crying, spread from a group of school girls, to the entire school, neighbouring schools, and entire villages. Thousands of people were affected to some degree. The phenomenon was not completely eradicated for some eighteen months!   



[url=https://www.csicop.org/si/show/rethinking_the_dancing_mania][/url]
(This post was last modified: 2017-09-16, 07:30 PM by Ninshub.)
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Complete audiobook on the topic:

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(2017-09-16, 06:45 PM)tim Wrote: I just listened to that video, Pollux, quite bizarre. I don't remember ever hearing about this. I wonder what was significant about the colour red and pointy shoes.
It sounds like a form of hysteria/fixation/ Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD).

Some erratic movement/spasms might have root in some bacterial infection that affects the brains motor cortex. There is bacteria, and even parasitic worm larvae - like Rat Lungworm or Creutzfeldt–Jakob-disease. - that can infect people’s brains - and if it's of the same nature it might affect  that certain part (motor cortex) of the brain first.  But its very hard to believe that it would manifest in a way of coordinated movement like dancing is. It would most likely involve spontaneous involuntary muscle spasms and jerking.

One can also think they are victims of a sort of mass-hypnosis. You can get people to do just about anything irrational under hypnosis, which mean that there is someone responsible for this ordeal. But I dont know how long a person can be kept in hypnosis - it might be individual. And I dont know if a person can be kept under hypnosis while they are physically hurting themselves.

We know that monotonous rhytms and dancing can put people in a sort of trance. Its been done for thousands of years, ask any shaman - or raver. But I dont think this trance would be so deep that one would ignore the body dying of exhaustion or the broken limbs/bones.

It could be some mental disorder. We know that some mental disorders cause very serious OCD's, that are even harmful. They just cant help themselves, and they can get hurt, even though it's not their intention. They can be so fixated on doing one specific thing over and over and over until someone physically stops them. But in this case, if it was some mental disorder, I dont understand how it could suddenly affect hundreds of people at the same time, in the same place.
(This post was last modified: 2017-09-16, 10:16 PM by Pollux.)
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(2017-09-16, 08:12 PM)Pollux Wrote: It sounds like a form of hysteria/fixation/ Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD).

Some erratic movement/spasms might have root in some bacterial infection that affects the brains motor cortex. There is bacteria, and even parasitic worm larvae - like Rat Lungworm or Creutzfeldt–Jakob-disease. - that can infect people’s brains - and if it's of the same nature it might affect  that certain part (motor cortex) of the brain first.  But its very hard to believe that it would manifest in a way of coordinated movement like dancing is. It would most likely involve spontaneous involuntary muscle spasms and jerking.

One can also think they are victims of a sort of mass-hypnosis. You can get people to do just about anything irrational under hypnosis, which mean that there is someone responsible for this ordeal. But I dont know how long a person can be kept in hypnosis - it might be individual. And I dont know if a person can be kept under hypnosis while they are physically hurting themselves.

We know that monotonous rhytms and dancing can put people in a sort of trance. Its been done for thousands of years, ask any shaman - or raver. But I dont think this trance would be so deep that one would ignore the body dying of exhaustion or the broken limbs/bones.

It could be some mental disorder. We know that some mental disorders cause very serious OCD's, that are even harmful. They just cant help themselves, and they can get hurt, even though it's not their intention. They can be so fixated on doing one specific thing over and over and over until someone physically stops them. But in this case, if it was some mental disorder, I don't understand how it could suddenly affect hundreds of people at the same time, in the same place.

Thanks, Pollux !

"But in this case, if it was some mental disorder, I don't understand how it could suddenly affect hundreds of people at the same time, in the same place."

Good point. Maybe it was producing very pleasurable visions and the harder they pushed, the closer they got to the light, so to speak. It's very odd though.
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(2017-09-16, 07:25 PM)Ninshub Wrote: More from the Wiki article:


That bit me think about the Hans Christian Andersen tale The Red Shoes about the girl forced to dance in pair of them, later adapted into this movie:



---
Psychological theory.
Skeptical Inquirer article.

This article links this phenomenon to other more recent unexplained "mass hysterias", like the Tanganyika laughter epidemic of 1962:



[url=https://www.csicop.org/si/show/rethinking_the_dancing_mania][/url]

"We took blood samples to see if it was a virus"   the laughing virus LOL Smile  The only known antidote is membership of Skeptiko.
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