S1E4 - The Dancing Plague of 1518: When a City Danced Itself to Exhaustion

In July of 1518, a woman stepped into a Strasbourg street and began to dance. She couldn't stop. Within weeks, hundreds were consumed by the same relentless compulsion, dancing to the point of injury, exhaustion, and even death. What really caused this bizarre and tragic epidemic? This episode travels to the sweltering, cobblestone streets of 16th-century Strasbourg to witness the unfolding of the dancing plague firsthand. Beginning with the solitary, frantic movements of Frau Troffea, we explore how a single dancer ignited a mass public crisis that baffled physicians and city officials, who prescribed *more* dancing as a cure. We delve...