Foreword

"There is a beautiful woman in the south, dancing with a light green waist." Dance appeared in China five thousand years ago. It cooperated with poetry and music and became a historical phenomenon in human history. One of the earliest art forms. There are many types of dance, including folk dance, ballet, Latin dance, modern dance, etc. Even if many people have no artistic talent, they can still tell the quality of a dance.

“One minute on stage, ten years off stage.” Learning dance is indeed a very hard thing. Many people start practicing it since childhood and dare not waste a moment. This is why they have wonderful performances on stage. During the performance, people see the dancers' light bodies and graceful movements, but they don't know how much effort goes into it. No matter how good a dancer you are, you will be sweating profusely after every dance, which shows how energy-consuming dancing is.

In people’s ears, dance is elegant and beautiful. However, in the Middle Ages, dance became a nightmare for many Europeans. No one thought that dance would become a disease. People suffering from this disease will be unable to control themselves and will keep dancing without eating or drinking until their legs and feet become weak and their whole body becomes weak, and finally they die from exhaustion. What's even more worrying is that this disease is still contagious. A large group of people gathered together and danced non-stop. If people didn't keep falling to the ground, it would have looked like a cheerful scene.

1. Dancing Plague

Seeing the above description of "Dancing Plague", many people should have thought of the story of "Red Dancing Shoes" in "Andersen's Fairy Tales". It tells the story of a little girl who loves beauty. After getting a pair of beautiful red dancing shoes, she wears them to church every day. However, the church does not allow wearing such bright clothes. In order to satisfy her vanity, she ignores them. Later, She also wore these red shoes to her mother's funeral, which is undoubtedly disrespectful to her.

In order to punish this vain girl, God made her dance non-stop in red shoes until she was exhausted and could not stop. In the end, the little girl who realized her mistake lost her legs. , the soul flies to heaven. It seems that those who got the "Dancing Plague" had the same symptoms as the little girl who was punished in the story. Did those people also make some mistakes and were punished by God? Obviously it's impossible. The story is fictional. As the saying goes, art comes from life. So how did the "dancing disease" that scared medieval Europeans start?

2. The suddenly dancing peasant woman

The story begins in 1518. Strasbourg, France, had just recovered from the Black Death, and people were still cautiously wary of all kinds of diseases. disease. July 14th seemed to be a very ordinary day. Everyone got up early and started the day's work. As a result, they found a woman dancing in front of their house. This woman's name was Luofia. No one knew about her. Why did she do nothing but keep dancing early in the morning? Even when her husband scolded her, she never stopped.

It didn’t take long for Luofia to be covered in sweat and breathing rapidly. Even so, she kept waving her arms. If you look closely, you will find that her eyes are full of red bloodshot eyes. , until the sun went down, Luofia couldn't hold it anymore and fell to the ground. I thought she would be fine after being crazy for a day, but the next day she struggled to get up and started dancing. I don’t know what the onlookers thought. Seeing Luofia’s helpless look, not only did no one persuade him, but some Many people joined in the dance.

Slowly there were more and more people, from a dozen to more than 400, such a large group of people began to dance in Strasbourg, and their dancing looked exactly like Lofia. Regardless of whether they were men or women, no matter what time or place, they danced sleeplessly, without eating or drinking. In the end, they collapsed to the ground weakly, and their breathing gradually disappeared. Originally, people could not live long without eating or drinking, and they continued to consume their energy like this every day. No one knew why they danced like this without their lives, but people knew that only death could stop them.

This "Dancing Plague" affected many people. For this reason, Strasbourg could only order a ban on dancing and music. However, it was soon discovered that most of the people suffering from the disease were poor, so the Governor-General Bastien Brandt gave an exception to the wealthy, who could party in their own houses, but just in case, they could not use percussion instruments such as tambourines. At that time, it was easier for people to play percussion instruments with strong rhythms. Makes people mad.

What to do with those people who are dancing so fast that they are going crazy? Because we couldn't understand the cause of the disease at all, we had to tie them up and use religious methods to "exorcise evil spirits" from them. However, this method did not seem to have any effect. This strange disease basically appeared several times every year. Few people died from strange "dancing sickness".

There is always a reason for everything, and people will not cherish their own lives so much and torture themselves in such a painful way. People have speculated where this disease comes from. Some people say it is from the devil. Curse, some people say it's a mental illness, you name it.

3. The real culprit of the "Dancing Plague"

As the saying goes: "Disease comes from the mouth." Since most of the sick are poor, what are the differences between the poor and the rich? Woolen cloth? The first is food. The food of the rich is delicious and clean, while the poor can eat anything to fill their stomachs. Moldy food is no exception. However, there is a fungus called ergot in moldy rye. After people eat it, they will produce Strong hallucinations, unconscious twitching and spasms, it looks like I am caught in a crazy dance, and all kinds of strange things will appear in front of my eyes.

It sounds like eating poisonous mushrooms, but poisonous mushrooms don't make people so "energetic." In fact, there is a kind of spider in Italy called Tarantella. The bite of this kind of spider is very painful. People who have been bitten by them will run into the streets and dance like crazy. Moreover, the victims of these poisonous spiders often gather in groups. They sang and danced together, and even rolled on the ground. They usually danced for four or five days, and only took a short break when they ran out of energy. Later, the dancers incorporated the dance performed by the poisonous spider victim into the dance. The work has also been welcomed by many people.

The world is very big, and there are still too many unknown things that humans need to understand. Before that, we don’t need to be afraid. Sometimes people’s fear of unknown things is far greater than themselves. No matter how strange the disease is, with the development and advancement of medical technology, the cause can always be found. Therefore, on the road to discovering the truth, keep a normal mind, don't scare yourself, and then move forward boldly, you can always get the answers you want from clues.