Why Did Hundreds of People Dance Until They Collapsed?

In July 1518, a woman in Strasbourg began dancing in the street, and she did not stop. Within weeks, hundreds had joined her. What really happened during the Dancing Plague of 1518? And why do historians still argue about it five centuries later? A historical visual essay by ONE MEAL LATER: paper, ink, maps and one very strange summer. CHAPTERS 0:00 One woman 0:25 The first dancer 1:09 Others join 1:56 The city makes it worse 2:35 Collapse 3:32 Why did this happen? 4:57 The bigger idea 5:26 One dancer A NOTE ON THE EVIDENCE Death counts are contested. One chronicle claims up to fifteen deaths a day; Strasbourg's surviving official records mention none. We say what is reported and what is known, and we keep the two apart. The city map is illustrative (after the walled city on its island in the Ill), not a survey. The 1374 outbreak marks are approximate. SOURCES John Waller, A Time to Dance, a Time to Die (Icon Books, 2008) John Waller, "In a spin: the mysterious dancing epidemic of 1518", Endeavour 32(3), 2008 John Waller, "A forgotten plague: making sense of dancing mania", The Lancet 373, 2009 John Waller, "The Dancing Plague of 1518", The Public Domain Review, 2018: https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/... E. Louis Backman, Religious Dances in the Christian Church and in Popular Medicine (1952) Robert E. Bartholomew, "Rethinking the dancing mania", Skeptical Inquirer 24(4), 2000 Kélina Gotman, Choreomania: Dance and Disorder (OUP, 2018) A. M. Rankin & P. J. Philip, "An epidemic of laughing in the Bukoba district of Tanganyika", Central African Journal of Medicine 9, 1963 All artwork, maps and music in this film are original. Narration voice generated with ElevenLabs. #DancingPlague #History #Documentary