For two months in the summer of 1518, some 400 residents of the city of Strasbourg in modern-day France fell victim to a disturbing epidemic that caused them to dance against their will. As if in ...

For some unknown reason, the dancing mania seemed to follow epidemics of the black plague. A three-year epidemic in 1005-1008 AD. wiped out an estimated one-half of the entire human race!

It was a warm June day in 1374 in the medieval town of Aix-Ia-Chapelle, present-day Aachen, Germany, when the dancing started. It was the holy feast of ...

The dancing mania ended in early September. ... During that particular “dancing plague,” as these episodes have been dubbed, “thousands of people danced in agony for days or weeks, ...

However those twitches were not the kind of dancing described in the outbreaks of dancing mania. Another notable epidemic broke out in the city of Strasbourg in 1518.

The mania rocketed around Western Europe, afflicting people in France and the Netherlands before subsiding. Then again in 1518, it "reappeared, explosively, in the city of Strasbourg in 1518.

This wasn’t the first time a European village had been plagued by “dancing mania.” ... The Strasbourg plague, however, was the worst. It struck 400 people and lasted until September, ...

It was not a standalone event: instances of “dancing mania” reportedly took place across Europe, particularly in the Holy Roman Empire, between the 14th and the 17th centuries.