In 1518 a strange sight could be seen all over the town of Strasbourg. Crowds of people dancing unceasingly, unable to control their movements, seemingly heedless of their blistered and bloodied feet. As the contagious dance grew, so did the body count as the frenzied dancers succumbed to exhaustion. Over 500 years later, this dancing plague leaves us with many questions, first among them being, “What in the heck?”. In this episode, we try to get to the bottom of this mysterious infectious dance by investigating several different hypotheses, which lead us down some wild roads. Tune in, put on your best dancing shoes, and drop that beat.
| History | Biology |
| Waller, John. Dancing plague: The strange, true story of an extraordinary illness. Sourcebooks, Inc., 2009. | Lee, M. R. “The history of ergot of rye (Claviceps purpurea) I: from antiquity to 1900.” The journal of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh 39.2 (2009): 179-184. |
| McNeill, William Hardy. Keeping together in time. Harvard University Press, 1997. | Belser-Ehrlich, Sarah, et al. “Human and cattle ergotism since 1900: symptoms, outbreaks, and regulations.” Toxicology and industrial health 29.4 (2013): 307-316. |
| Caporael, Linnda R. “Ergotism: the satan loosed in Salem?.” Science 192.4234 (1976): 21-26. | Schiff Jr, Paul L. “Ergot and its alkaloids.” American journal of pharmaceutical education 70.5 (2006): 98. |
| Lanska, Douglas J. “The Dancing Manias: Psychogenic illness as a social phenomenon.” Neurologic-Psychiatric Syndromes in Focus-Part II. Vol. 42. Karger Publishers, 2018. 132-141. | Eadie, Mervyn J. “Convulsive ergotism: epidemics of the serotonin syndrome?.” The lancet neurology 2.7 (2003): 429-434. |
| McAlister, Neil. “The dancing pilgrims at Muelebeek.” Journal of the history of medicine and allied sciences 32.3 (1977): 315-319. | Caporael, Linnda R. “Ergotism: the satan loosed in Salem?.” Science 192.4234 (1976): 21-26. |
| Miller, Lynneth J. “Divine Punishment or Disease? Medieval and Early Modern Approaches to the 1518 Strasbourg Dancing Plague.” Dance Research 35.2 (2017): 149-164. | Balaratnasingam, Sivasankaran, and Aleksandar Janca. “Mass hysteria revisited.” Current Opinion in Psychiatry 19.2 (2006): 171-174. |
| Spanos, Nicholas P., and Jack Gottlieb. Ergotism and the Salem Village witch trials. na, 1976. | Bartholomew, Robert E., Simon Wessely, and G. James Rubin. “Mass psychogenic illness and the social network: is it changing the pattern of outbreaks?.” Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine 105.12 (2012): 509-512. |
| Waller, John. “A forgotten plague: making sense of dancing mania.” The Lancet 373.9664 (2009): 624-625. | Lee, Yao-Tung, and Shih-Jen Tsai. “The mirror neuron system may play a role in the pathogenesis of mass hysteria.” Medical hypotheses 74.2 (2010): 244-245. |
| Bartholomew, Robert E., Simon Wessely, and G. James Rubin. “Mass psychogenic illness and the social network: is it changing the pattern of outbreaks?.” Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine 105.12 (2012): 509-512. | |
| Risavi, Brian L., Erik Iszkula, and Bryan Yost. “Sydenham’s Chorea.” The Journal of emergency medicine (2019). | |
| https://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/all-disorders/sydenham-chorea-information-page |
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