#17: The Dancing Plague Between 1374 and 1518
Everybody loves to dance every once in a while, but usually, people have a say in whether they choose to dance or not… It might seem a little bit strange, considering that no one can be made to dance without their physical consent. However, in certain periods of time, something was plaguing certain parts of Europe known as “Dancing Mania” or the “Dancing Plague.”
The phenomenon was expressed through people uncontrollably dancing with an inability to stop. Most of the time, people would only be able to stop this madness by physically being too exhausted to dance any longer and quite literally needing to pass out. This particular phenomenon occurred over centuries and has been deemed by modern scholars as a mass psychogenic illness. Meaning that nothing was physically wrong with those affected, rather they were convinced of a social phenomenon that made them believe there was.