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The so-called “dance plague” first appeared in Europe in 1518 year. Struck by her, they danced day and night, with no strength stop and eventually die of exhaustion or heart attack.
This mysterious disease, spreading rapidly, was transmitted in an unknown way from one person to another. It all started with a desperate dancer who appeared on the streets on a July day Strasbourg According to historical evidence, Frau Toffea danced with little respite for more than a month. In a week she 34 followers appeared, following her everywhere and not stop dancing, and by the end of her deadly dance tour another 400 new dancers managed to join her.
When the mysterious epidemic began to take on awesome scale, city authorities decided to intervene and turned for help to to doctors. Medieval doctors unanimously declared that restless the dancers are obsessed with the devil and that medicine in this case powerless. Then the burgomaster of Strasbourg ordered to hire for miserable who could not stop dancing, musicians, and build wooden dance floors for them. The head of the city was I am convinced that the obsessed will give a damn and calm down, but his measures could hardly give any results – crazy dances always ended by themselves, as unexpectedly as started.
We have heard a lot of evidence that the outbreaks of the mysterious plague more than once hit Europe. For example, Peter Bruegel, the famous author of the canvas “Flemish proverbs”, depicted on one dance fever from her paintings seems to have embraced Flanders in 1564.
There are many cases when in the Middle Ages people were taken dance for no apparent reason and stopped only after a few days, later this phenomenon was called the “dances of St. Witt.” IN Italy’s unusual disease was called “tarantism”: people believed that crazy dancers start dancing after being bitten by huge spiders, so as not to die from poison (hence it takes its name famous dynamic dance of tarantella).
The dance epidemic remains a mystery to scientists so far, although they make various assumptions (see video). However modern outbreaks of mass psychosis, for example, during performances of famous artists (recall at least concerts “Beatles”), at football matches and so on, for some reason not equated neither to disease, nor even to obsession, although, as some researchers claim the roots of the origin of these phenomena very similar. So the plague, such as “St. Witt’s dances,” is quite can erupt again and take in modern society much more terrifying proportions …
Epidemics
