A dancing plague? That sounds alright really doesn’t it? A spot of pathological boogie never did anyone any harm. That’s what you’d think, but the dancing plague of 1518 wasn’t just a relaxing rumba, oh no sir, it was a sinister sidestep followed by a fatal fandango. No fun at all.

The dancing plague started in Strasbourg in the July of 1518. It lasted about a month and affected hundreds of people, many of which went on to die of heart conditions, stroke and exhaustion. See what I mean? It’s not as fun as you’d think.

The first victim of the plague was a young lady named Frau Troffea; one day, without warning, Troffea started getting down to an imaginary song in her head in the middle of the street, and didn’t stop basically. Within a week another 34 people had joined her silent disco and within a month there were around 400 dancers; the bedlam was in full swing.

Yeah, 400 people dancing solidly for a month. It sounds made up and initially I was happy to dismiss it as a semi-fairy tale or a bad case of Chinese whispers, but I couldn’t get out of it that easily. Contemporaneous reports from physician notes, cathedral sermons, local and regional chronicles, and even notes issued by the Strasbourg city council all corroborate the mad tale.

As things were getting worse, a lot of the nobles sought physician’s help and advice. They ruled out astrological and supernatural causes and decided it was a physical problem caused by “hot blood”.

Back in the early days of medicine one of the most common ways to heal someone was with bleeding, or blood-letting. “If in doubt, bleed them out” was the general adage. But for some reason they didn’t opt for it in this case, what the council did was quite a bold and strange move.

The authorities decided that rather than try to detain these waltzing weirdos they would encourage them. They felt that the sufferers had to get the dancing out of their system. The powers that be opened a couple of guildhalls and a grain store and even set up a stage. At one point they employed a band to accompany the sick as they danced to their deaths.

You could be forgiven for thinking that something as weird as this was a one-off. You’d be very wrong indeed…