In the summer of 1518, a woman stepped into a Strasbourg street and began to dance — and could not stop. Within weeks hundreds had joined her, some dancing themselves to death, and 500 years later no one fully agrees why.
A full documentary walkthrough of the outbreak, from Frau Troffea's first steps to the hundreds who followed. The best single-video primer on the event.
The dense reference: names, dates, contemporary chronicles, and the physicians who blamed 'hot blood.' Note the detail that dancers bled into their shoes.
National Geographic places choreomania in its medieval world of famine, disease, and the terror of Saint Vitus — arguing you can't diagnose it with modern eyes alone.
Weighs the competing culprits: ergot fungus on damp rye, religious cult, and stress-induced mass hysteria. A good tour of why each theory has holes.
HISTORY lays out the strongest modern case — mass psychogenic illness triggered by dread — and explains why ergot poisoning probably can't account for coordinated dancing.
How Strasbourg's panicked officials first PRESCRIBED more dancing — hiring musicians and building stages — before reversing course and hauling dancers to a shrine.
A measured encyclopedic close-out, connecting 1518 to the broader European history of 'dancing manias' stretching back to the 14th century.