In 1518, on the city of Strasbourg (then part of the Holy Roman Empire), over 400 victims were attacked by a mysterious sickness that gave people the sudden and irresistible urge to dance. For days, the streets were lined with people shaking, kicking, and twisting, without stop. Many died of heat exhaustion, some even strokes, and heart attacks. The first poor soul to spread the unseemly disease was known as Frau Troffea, when she stepped into the road, flung her arms into the air, and began to kick her legs in a sort of dance.
Local doctors and physicians were clueless to as what the virus was caused from or where it came. Many locals blamed it on ‘hot blood’, suggesting that the victims simply dance the fever away. Today, some believe that due to famine and plague, a stress overcome with hysteria, caused the Europeans to trigger an unordinary affect. Some also believe that they were part of some type of religious cult, or that a toxic mold, ergot, was ingested by them, causing spasms and hallucinations.
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