0:00 In July of 1518, a woman named Frau Troffea walked into a street in Strasbourg and started to dance.0:07 And just to be clear, we're not talking about a celebration.0:12 Last week we had a bear who was an actual soldier in World War Two.0:17 This week, we have a woman who just… couldn't stop.0:21 She couldn't stop.0:22 She danced for somewhere between four and six days.0:26 Alone.0:27 In the street.0:28 Without music.0:29 And you'd think people would, you know, intervene.0:33 Help her.0:34 But within a week, thirty-four other people had joined her.0:38 Mm-hm.0:39 And by the end of the month, the number of dancers was around four hundred.0:44 So you have a public health crisis emerging.0:48 The city's leaders, the magistrates and physicians, they get together.0:53 They have to figure this out.0:56 Right.0:56 And they rule out anything supernatural.0:59 They decide it's not a curse, it's a medical condition.1:03 They called it "hot blood." Hot blood.1:06 And their prescription for this… was more dancing.1:10 More dancing.1:11 They reasoned that the only way to cure the fever was for the afflicted to, uh, dance it out of their systems.1:20 So they set aside halls for them.1:22 They built a literal stage in the city market.1:26 They even hired professional musicians to play pipes and drums to keep the people moving.1:33 So the official, state-sponsored solution to uncontrollable dancing was a mandatory public rave.1:40 Exactly.1:41 And it was a complete catastrophe.1:43 Because people started dying.1:46 You have hundreds of people, already exhausted, being forced to move constantly.1:52 They're having heart attacks.1:54 Strokes.1:55 Sheer exhaustion.1:56 The sources say at its peak, the plague was killing up to fifteen people per day.2:02 And the whole time, the band is just… playing.2:06 Because they were ordered to.2:08 It's an unbelievable image.2:10 Finally, the magistrates realize their plan is backfiring.2:15 Horribly.2:15 So they switch tactics.2:17 They ban all public dancing.2:19 They shut down the music.2:21 They take the remaining dancers to a shrine dedicated to Saint Vitus, hoping for a miracle.2:28 And eventually, over the next few weeks… it just sort of… stopped.2:34 The last of the dancers gradually ceased their movements.2:38 But nobody really knows why it started.2:41 The leading theory today is something called mass psychogenic illness.2:46 Basically, mass hysteria, probably triggered by the extreme poverty and famine of the time.2:53 There are other ideas—that they ate a type of mold that grows on rye bread, an ergot fungus, which can cause convulsions.3:03 But that doesn't really explain the coordinated dancing.3:07 No.3:07 It doesn't.3:08 And the records from the time are very clear.3:12 The city council records, sermons from the cathedral, local chronicles… they all describe it the same way.3:20 Not as convulsions, but as dancing.3:23 So we're left with this historical fact.3:26 For a few weeks in the summer of 1518, a city's solution to a deadly plague was to hire a band.3:33 It's a reminder that sometimes the strangest explanation… is simply what happened.
