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CASE #HTCBXM · 2 entities · 1 connections
The Dancing Plague of 1518
Hundreds of people in a French city danced uncontrollably for weeks in 1518 — some reportedly until they died.
In July 1518, a woman named Frau Troffea began dancing in the streets of Strasbourg and couldn't stop. Within a month, as many as 400 people had joined her in involuntary, exhausting dancing that lasted for weeks, with some accounts describing dancers collapsing from heart attacks, strokes, or sheer exhaustion.
✓documented
Quick facts
- →City authorities initially built a stage and hired musicians, believing more dancing would cure the affliction — it backfired.
- →Contemporary accounts describe as many as fifteen deaths a day at the mania's peak.
- →Physician Paracelsus chronicled the event based on local records and testimony years later.
- →It wasn't a one-off — a similar dancing mania was documented in Aachen, Germany in 1374.
Entities on file
Strasbourg dancing plague (event)
1518 outbreak of involuntary mass dancing that affected hundreds in Strasbourg.
No outgoing connections on file.
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Frau Troffea (person)
The first documented dancer; her solitary dancing in July 1518 is recorded as the epidemic's starting point.
→ began → Strasbourg dancing plague✓documented