The Dancing Plague of 1518, also called the dance epidemic of 1518, was a case of dancing mania that occurred in Strasbourg, Alsace, in the Holy Roman Empire, from July to September 1518, in which somewhere between fifty and four hundred people took to dancing for weeks. Historian John Waller's stress-induced mass hysteria explanation is the most popular theory behind the episode, though other theories include ergot poisoning; the total number of deaths is disputed and remains unknown.
Facts
Classification
Type of PhenomenonSocial or Interpersonal Phenomenon 1 Sources
1. Dancing Plague of 1518 (Wikipedia)
Wikipedia Dancing Plague of 1518 lead paragraph (w-bbfill-psych-diag-0926, keyword classification against phenomenon-kind enum definitions, hand-checked)View the Source Reader Challenges (0)
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