“Dance until you drop”, is a well known saying. But, would you believe, if I told you, people once danced themselves to death?
They flailed, swayed until they died. At heights, 15 people a day kept dying to heart attacks, strokes, or complete exhaustion, but the madness just didn't seem to end-more people, more dance.
The then physicians called it a result of “Hot Blood in the Brain” and reckoned the cure to be ‘even more dance’ hoping the baffling ailment would leave their bodies. Drummers were called, stages were set up and the insanity began. However, it backfired. All Hell broke loose as even more people ended joining the craze.
In those superstitious times, the dancing plague was thought of as a curse from St Vitus, some dancers were carried to Shrines and made to wear holy red boots.
While the frenzy kept spreading within Strasbourg and to neighboring cities for 2 whole months,
almost as suddenly as it struck, it ceased. This indeed was an unusual event in history, when people would get up and dance, to no music, for no reason, until their lungs or hearts just gave out.
A historian, John Waller in his book says, back then, Famines, Floods, disease reigned these regions, and the Dancing Plague was nothing but, mass hysteria.
There are theories of the cause being food poisoning due to ergot, fungi, which grows on grains known to cause hallucinations and used in LSD-like drugs. Another theory explains the dancers to be a part of a Dancing Cult.