Dancing Mania

Dan Snow's History Hit

History Hit

History

4.7 • 12.9K Ratings

🗓️ 19 July 2021

⏱️ 30 minutes

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Summary

In the summer of 1518, one of the most bizarre afflictions in history struck the city of Strasburg; dancing mania. This epidemic of dancing spread, almost like a plague, through the population with many hundreds of people dancing wildly and seemingly uncontrollably often to the point of collapse and even death. Perhaps, even stranger is that the outbreak in Strasbourg is far from the only recorded incidence of this phenomenon. But what caused it? To help delve into this fascinating subject Dan is joined by Dr John Waller, Associate Professor of the History of Medicine and author of A Time to Dance, a Time to Die: The Extraordinary Story of the Dancing Plague of 1518. John explains the atmosphere of fear and tension in Strasbourg in which the dancing mania took hold and how the power of superstition and belief can take the human mind and body in almost unbelievable directions.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi everybody, welcome to Dan's Notes History It. I'm just standing in Trinity
0:04.9	House. This is an organization over 500 years old, established by Henry VIII to
0:10.8	look after the navigational safety of the English coast to replace
0:16.2	lighthouse, boys, buoys for my North American audience and things to make sure
0:21.3	seafarers could access ports, access the open ocean safely,
0:27.8	I'm skirting all the various navigational obstacles that create an unwise
0:32.3	the place in the way of British seafarers and it is an amazing building here.
0:36.4	I'm looking at the ship models, the golden hind, what's beautiful, such a tiny
0:41.0	little ship, very high folks all in stand castles there, sailed by Francis Drake
0:45.7	around the world in 1577 to 1581-ish I think and that was obviously the first
0:53.3	Indo-sircombe navigation, second ever circumnavigation of other, the food
0:57.0	joyer, the ship captured during the seven years war, particularly bloody action
1:02.1	that one in the sauner battle. I think it was Harvey who captured, can't remember,
1:06.3	the HMS victory obviously here, Nelson's flagship at Trafalgar, there is
1:10.8	virtually no official British maritime connected building, there's not have a
1:15.2	model of HMS victory in it, fact, fact. Today though this podcast has nothing to do
1:21.9	with Britain's maritime history which is unusual, I'm here because obviously I'm
1:25.6	filming a program for history it, the brilliant TV channel that the team at
1:29.7	history have founded, it's going great guns, if you don't watch this latest
1:33.6	program which I'll be announcing soon you can do so at historyhit.tv
1:39.2	we've just been informed by our platform provider that we have to upgrade, upgrade
1:43.6	our payment scheme because we've got too many subscribers, now that is the kind
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