LOOKING BACK

Dancing plagues
and mass hysteria
John Waller on how distress and pious fear have led to bizarre outbreaks
across the ages

he year was 1374. In dozens of

medieval towns scattered along the
valley of the River Rhine hundreds
of people were seized by an agonising
compulsion to dance. Scarcely pausing to
rest or eat, they danced for hours or even
days in succession. They were victims of
one of the strangest afflictions in Western
history. Within weeks the mania had
engulfed large areas of north-eastern
France and the Netherlands, and only
after several months did the epidemic
subside. In the following century there
were only a few isolated outbreaks of
compulsive dancing. Then it reappeared,
explosively, in the city of
Strasbourg in 1518.
Chronicles indicate that it
then consumed about 400
men, women and children,
causing dozens of deaths
(Waller, 2008).
Not long before the
Strasbourg dancing
epidemic, an equally
strange compulsion had
gripped a nunnery in the
Spanish Netherlands. In
1491 several nuns were
possessed by devilish
familiars which impelled
them to race around like
dogs, jump out of trees in
imitation of birds or miaow
and claw their way up tree
trunks in the manner of
cats. Such possession
epidemics were by no

references

644

Backman, E.L. (1952). Religious dances in

the Christian Church and in popular
medicine (Trans. E. Classen). London:
Allen & Unwin.
Bartholomew, R.E. (2001). Little green
men, meowing nuns, and head-hunting
panics: a study of mass psychogenic
illness and social delusion. Jefferson,
NC: McFarland.
Bartholomew, R.E. & Wessely, S. (2002).
Protean nature of mass sociogenic

means confined to nunneries, but

nuns were disproportionately affected
(Newman, 1998). Over the next 200
years, in nunneries everywhere from
Rome to Paris, hundreds were plunged
into states of frantic delirium during
which they foamed, screamed and
convulsed, sexually propositioned
exorcists and priests, and confessed
to having carnal relations with devils
or Christ.
These events may sound wildly
improbable, but there is clear
documentary evidence that they did in
fact happen. The dancing plagues were

illness From possessed nuns to

chemical and biological terrorism
fears. British Journal of Psychiatry,
180, 300306.
Berger, G. (1931). Ergot and ergotism.
London: Gurney and Jackson.
Bourgignon, E. (1991). Possession.
Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press.
Colligan, M.J. & Murphy, L.R. (1982). A
review of mass psychogenic illness in
work settings. In M.J. Colligan, J.W.

independently described by scores of

physicians, chroniclers, monks and
priests, and for the 1518 outbreak we can
even read the panicky municipal orders
written by the Strasbourg authorities at
the time of the epidemic (Midelfort, 1999;
Waller, 2008). Similarly, trial documents
and the archives of the inquisition
provide copious, in-depth accounts of
nuns doing and saying the strangest of
things (Sluhovsky, 2002).
Writers then and now have offered
various interpretations of these strange
and sometimes deadly crises. It has been
suggested that the dancing maniacs of
1374 and 1518 were members of a
heretical dancing cult. Contemporary
observers, however, made clear their view
that the dancing was a sickness. Nor did
the Church, at a time when heresies were
quickly suppressed, believe the dancers
to be anything but victims of a terrible
affliction, natural or divine. In recent
decades a vogue for simple biological
explanations has inspired the view that
epidemic madnesses of the past were
caused by the ingestion of ergot, a mould
containing psychotropic chemicals
(Backman, 1952; Matossian, 1989).
But scholarship in the fields of
psychology, history and
anthropology provides compelling
evidence that the dancing plagues
and the possession epidemics of
Europes nunneries were in fact
classic instances of a very different
phenomenon: mass psychogenic
illness.

Altered states
An important clue to the cause
of these bizarre outbreaks lies in
the fact that they appear to have
involved dissociative trance, a
condition involving (among other
things) a dramatic loss of selfcontrol. It is hard to imagine
people dancing for several days,
with bruised and bloodied feet,
except in an altered state of
consciousness. But we also have

Pennebaker & L.R. Murphy (Eds.)

Mass psychogenic illness: A social
psychological analysis (pp.3352).
Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum
Associates.
de Certeau, M. (2000). The possession at
Loudun (Trans. Michael B. Smith).
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Demos, J. (1983). Entertaining Satan:
Witchcraft and the culture of early New
England. New York: Oxford University

Press.
Dzokoto, V.A. & Adams, G. (2005).
Understanding genital-shrinking
epidemics in West Africa: Koro, Juju,
or mass psychogenic illness? Culture,
Medicine and Psychiatry, 29, 5378.
Katz, R. (1982). Boiling energy: Community
healing among the Kalahari Kung.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press.
Martin, A. (1914). Geschichte der

vol 22 no 7

july 2009

looking back

eyewitness evidence that they were not

waters of the Rhine rising 34 feet, of flood
fully conscious. Onlookers spoke of the
waters pouring over town walls, of homes
dancing maniacs of 1374 as wild, frenzied
and market places submerged, and of
and seeing visions. One noted that while
decomposing horses bobbing along
they danced their minds were no longer
watery streets (Backman, 1952). In the
clear and another spoke of how, having
decade before the dancing plague of 1518,
wearied themselves through dancing and
famine, sickness and terrible cold caused
jumping, they went raging like beasts
widespread despair in Strasbourg and its
over the land (Backman, 1952). The
environs (Rapp, 1974). Bread prices
hundreds of possessed nuns described in
reached their highest levels for a
chronicles, legal records, theological texts
generation, thousands of starving farmers
or the archives of the Catholic Inquisition
and vine growers arrived at the city gates,
were equally subject to dissociative trance
and old killers like leprosy and the plague
(Newman, 1998; Rosen, 1968). Some may were joined by a terrifying new affliction
have simulated the behaviour of the
named syphilis. These were intensely
demoniac as a means
traumatic times.
of eliciting positive
Nuns were protected
attention (Walker,
from many of the
during their possession
1981), but the
indignities of daily life,
attacks, dissociating nuns
detailed descriptions
but nunneries could also
often behaved with
of astute and
become toxic psychological
alarming lewdness
cautious inquisitors
environments. Even in wellleave little doubt that
managed communities,
most were genuinely
some nuns were inevitably
entranced.
unhappy. Sisters were often
How might we explain these
consigned to lives of quiet contemplation
epidemics of dissociation? Ergot could
in accordance with the wishes of their
have induced hallucinations and
parents rather than any conspicuous piety
convulsions in nuns who ate bread made
on their own part. Once inside the
from contaminated flour, but it is highly
cloisters it was very hard for them to get
unlikely that ergotism would cause
out. But those who keenly embraced the
remorseless bouts of dancing (Berger,
spiritual life were often the most
1931). Nor is there any evidence that
desperate. Tormented by a feeling of
what the victims of mass possession ate
falling short of the exacting standards of
or drank made any difference. Rather,
holiness imposed by their orders, plenty
as explained below, there are very strong
reflected with terrible fear on the fiery
indications that fearful and depressed
destiny awaiting those impure in mind
communities were unusually prone to
or deed.
epidemic possession. And given that
A notable example is that of Jeanne
there is a well-established link between
des Anges, Mother Superior of the
Loudun nunnery in southern France,
psychological stress and dissociation, this
who became infatuated with a local priest,
correlation is immediately suggestive of
Father Grandier, in the year 1627. When
mass psychogenic illness.
I did not see him, she later confessed,
I burned with desire for him. In
Fear and loathing
consequence, Jeanne felt overwhelming
The years preceding the dancing
worthlessness and guilt. After weeks of
epidemics were exceptional in their
painful penance and introspection, she
harshness. The 1374 outbreak maps on to
fell into a dissociative state during which
the areas most severely affected, earlier in
she repeatedly accused Grandier of
the same year, by one of the worst floods
plotting with Satan to make her lust after
of the century. Chronicles tell of the
him. Within days, several more nuns had

Tanzkrankheit in Deutschland.
Zeitschrift des Vereins fr Volkskunde,
24, 113134 & 225239.
Matossian, M.K. (1989). Poisons of the
past: Molds, epidemics and history.
New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Midelfort, H.C.E. (1999). A history of
madness in sixteenth-century Germany.
Stanford, CA: Stanford University
Press.
Nandi, D.N., Banerjee, G., Nandi S. &

Nandi, P. (1992). Is hysteria on the

wane? A community survey in West
Bengal, India. British Journal of
Psychiatry, 160, 8791.
Newman, B. (1998). Possessed by the
spirit: Devout women, demoniacs,
and the apostolic life in the thirteenth
century. Speculum, 73, 733770.
Norton, M.B. (2003). In the devil's snare:
The Salem witchcraft crisis of 1692.
New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

read discuss contribute at www.thepsychologist.org.uk

followed suit, all deliriously pointing

the finger at the hapless priest. After an
investigation by the Inquisition, Grandier
was burnt alive (de Certeau, 2000). As in
the case of the Loudun nunnery, a deep,
guilty longing for human intimacy could
trigger collective breakdowns. This is in
part why, during their possession attacks,
dissociating nuns often behaved with
alarming lewdness: lifting their habits,
simulating copulation, and giving their
demons names such as Dogs Dick,
Fornication, even Ash-Coloured Pussy.
Guilt and desire could drive a nun to
distraction (Sluhovsky, 2002).
The fortitude of many a nun was
most severely tested during the
evangelical reform movement that swept
their communities from the early 1400s.
Striving to restore the harsh spiritual
codes of earlier centuries, reformers
instructed the nuns to consume only the
blandest fare, to spurn all vanity, to adopt
exacting regimes of abstinence and selfabasement, and to meditate routinely on
the evils of Satan and the flames of Hell.
Often the younger daughters of nobles or
rich burghers, many nuns did not adjust
well to tasteless meals, pillow-less beds
and evenings bereft of music and
conversation. Hence the arrival of
reformist Mother Superiors precipitated
a significant number of mass possessions.
Take, for example, the Ursuline nuns of
Auxonne in eastern France who
experienced a possession crisis in 1658
after the appointment of the evangelical
Barbe Buve to their nunnery. For several
years, distressed and dissociating nuns
accused her of being a witch, of killing
babies and of being a lesbian. Barbe Buve
was exonerated but judiciously assigned
to an alternative nunnery. The possession
crisis petered out (Sluhovsky, 2002).
Mass possession also affected secular
communities, and here too the role of
stress is abundantly clear. The girls whose
grievous fits and hideous clamors and
screeching set off the Salem witch panic
in New England in 1692 were the
members of a community rent by
factional strife (Demos, 1983). They were

Phoon, W.H. (1982). Outbreaks of mass

hysteria at workplaces in Singapore:
Some patterns and modes of
presentation. In M.J. Colligan, J.W.
Pennebaker & L.R. Murphy (Eds.)
Mass psychogenic illness: A social
psychological analysis (pp.2132).
Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum
Associates.
Rankin, A.M. & Philip, P.J. (1963). An
epidemic of laughing in the Bukoba

district of Tanganyika. Central African

Medical Journal, 9, 167170.
Rapp, F. (1974). Rformes et rformation
Strasbourg: glise et socit dans le
diocse de Strasbourg (1450 1525).
Strasbourg: Association des
Publications prs les Universits de
Strasbourg.
Roach, E.S. & Langley, R.L. (2004).
Episodic neurological dysfunction due
to mass hysteria. Archives of

645

looking back

also terrified of attacks by the Native

American tribes which had already
slaughtered the parents and relatives
of several of those at the heart of the
witchcraft accusations (Norton, 2003).
Fear and anguish were the
common denominators of dancing
plagues and possession crises. But this
is only part of the story.

their cultures (Katz, 1982;

Sharp, 1993). We have
every reason to think that
the victims of dancing
plagues and possession
epidemics were also acting
in accordance with the
rich theology of their
worlds.
That the dancing
plagues were reliant on
Rude devils and cursing saints
cultural belief-systems is
Studies of possession cults in
apparent from the fact that
hundreds of modern cultures, from
they were concentrated in
Haiti to the Arctic, reveal that people
just those communities
are more likely to experience
where we know there to
dissociative trance if they already
have been a pre-existing
believe in the possibility of spirit
belief in the possibility of
possession (Rouget, 1985). Minds can
dancing curses being sent
be prepared, by learning or passive
down from Heaven or
exposure, to shift into altered states.
Hell. In 1374 the dancers
The anthropologist Erika Bourguignon
believed that Satan had
(1991) speaks of an environment of
unleashed an irresistible
belief, the set of accepted ideas about
dance, hence they not
the spirit world that members of
only danced interminably,
communities absorb, thus preparing
but also begged for divine
them later to achieve the possession
intercession, hurried to
state. It is not necessary, however, to
holy sites, and submitted
Nuns believed implicitly in the possibility of possession and
be formally trained. The dancers of
gladly to exorcism (Backman,
so made themselves susceptible to it
1374 and 1518 occupied an
1952). The people of
environment of belief that accepted
Strasbourg in 1518 were
the threat of divine curse, possession or
involuntary possession states. Moreover,
convinced that a saint called Vitus had
bewitchment. They didnt intend to enter
early modern women were imbued with
unleashed a dancing curse (Martin, 1914;
trance-like states, but their metaphysical
the idea that as the tainted heirs of Eve
Waller, 2008). And so, having entered the
beliefs made it possible for them to do so.
they were more liable to succumb to
possession state, it seems that they acted
Similarly, it is only by taking cultural
Satan, a misogynistic trope that often
according to the conventions of the St
context seriously that we can explain the
heightened their suggestibility.
Vitus myth: dancing for days on end. The
striking epidemiological facts that
So when one especially distressed nun
dance turned epidemic, as it had in 1374,
possession crises so often struck religious
began to faint, foam, convulse and speak
because each new victim lent further
houses and that men were far less often
in strange tongues, there was always a
credibility to the belief in supernatural
the victims of mass diabolical possession.
chance that the more suggestible of her
agency. Indeed, the Strasbourg epidemic
The daily lives of nuns were saturated in
sisters would begin to experience the
exemplifies the awesome power of
a mystical supernaturalism, their
same kind of dissociation, convinced that
suggestion: the city authorities ensured
imaginations vivid with devils, demons,
Satan was stalking their cloisters in search
that the outbreak got out of control by
Satanic familiars and wrathful saints.
of impure souls.
having the dancers gathered together and
They believed implicitly in the possibility
Modern anthropology and psychology
left to dance in some of the most public
of possession and so made themselves
also reveal how beliefs and expectations
spaces in the city (Waller, 2008).
susceptible to it. Evangelical Mother
can shape the individuals experience of
Theological conventions also
Superiors often made them more
dissociation. In societies where people are
conditioned the behaviour of demoniac
vulnerable by encouraging trance and
encouraged to enter trance states so as to
nuns. This is apparent from the fact that
ecstasy; mind-altering forms of worship
make contact with a spirit world, they
nearly all possession epidemics occurred
prepared them for later entering
typically behave in ways prescribed by
within a single 300-year period, from

Neurology, 61, 12691272.

Rosen, G. (1968). Madness in society:
Chapters in the historical sociology of
mental illness. London: Routledge &
Kegan Paul.
Rouget, G. (1985). Music and trance: A
theory of the relations between music
and possession. Chicago: Chicago
University Press.
Sharp, L.A. (1993). The possessed and the
dispossessed: Spirits, identity, and

646

power in a Madagascar migrant town.

Berkeley, CA: University of California
Press.
Shorter, E. (1992). From paralysis to
fatigue: A history of psychosomatic
illness in the modern era. New York:
Free Press.
Sluhovsky, M. (2002). The devil in the
convent. American Historical Review,
107, 13791411.
Walker, D.P. (1981). Unclean spirits:

Possession and exorcism in France and

England in the late sixteenth and early
seventeenth centuries. Philadelphia,
PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Waller, J. (2008). A time to dance, a time to
die: The extraordinary story of the
dancing plague of 1518. Cambridge:
Icon Books.
Wessely, S. (1987). Mass hysteria: Two
syndromes. Psychological Medicine,
17, 109120.

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looking back

around 1400 to the early 1700s. The

reason is that only during this period did
religious writers insist that such events
were possible (Newman 1998).
Theologians, inquisitors and exorcists
established the rules of mass demonic
possession to which dissociating nuns
then unconsciously conformed: writhing,
foaming, convulsing, dancing, laughing,
speaking in tongues and making obscene
gestures and propositions. These were
shocking but entirely stereotypical
performances based on deep-seated
beliefs about Satans depravity drawn from
religious writings and from accounts of
previous possessions.
For centuries, then, distress and
pious fear worked in concert to produce
epidemics of dancing and possession.

Body and mind

In 1749 a German nunnery in Wrzburg
experienced an epidemic of screaming,
squirming and trance which led to the
beheading of a suspected witch. By this
period, however, the dancing plagues had
disappeared and possession crises were
rarities. The incidence of possession
declined with the rise of modern
rationalism (Bartholomew, 2001).
Thereafter, mass outbreaks of dissociation
tended to be confined to harshly managed
settings such as factories and schools, and
to be triggered by groundless fears of
poisoning or exposure to toxic chemicals
(see box opposite). For a variety of
reasons, even these outbreaks are now
uncommon in the Western world.
But the dancing plagues and the
experiences of demoniac nuns still have
something to tell us about human
responses to stress. For these events place
in bold relief the extraordinary power of
context to shape how anguish and fear
are expressed. What the historian Edward
Shorter calls the symptom pool for
psychosomatic illness has varied
significantly over time and between
cultures (Shorter, 1992), and the
changing incidences of conversion
disorder, somatoform disorder and
dissociative trance are all attributable,
at least in part, to shifting norms and
expectations (Nandi et al., 1992).
Madnesses of the past of course tell us
much about the worlds that sustained
them. But wild epidemics of dancing and
possession can also serve as powerful
reminders of the instability of many
psychiatric conditions.
I John Waller is in the Department of History
at Michigan State University, and is the
author of A Time to Dance, a Time to Die
wallerj1@msu.edu

Modern hysterias
Even if dancing plagues are things of the past, mass psychogenic illness (MPI) remains a
part of the human condition. MPI has been defined as the collective occurrence of physical
symptoms and related beliefs among two or more persons in the absence of an identifiable
pathogen (Colligan & Murphy, 1982). Simon Wessely (1987) has usefully separated outbreaks
of MPI into two different kinds: mass anxiety hysteria and mass motor hysteria.
Mass anxiety hysteria usually involves the sudden expression of intense anxiety in
response to a false threat. In Western settings, plausible fears of poisoning or exposure to
toxic chemicals have been known to trigger classic stress-reactions such as fainting, nausea,
weakness and hyperventilation. In a school in Blackburn in 1965, for instance, as many as 141
pupils were affected by psychogenic dizziness, nausea, spasms and shortness of breath after
several girls had publicly fainted (Bartholomew & Wessely, 2002). Unless the initial fear is
given credibility by the media or authorities, cases of mass anxiety hysteria seldom last more
than a few days.
Mass motor hysteria, in contrast, typically requires a prolonged build-up of psychological
tension which then manifests itself in dissociative states, conversion symptoms and other
psychomotor abnormalities. These can persist for weeks or months. Such outbreaks are often
shaped by the kinds of supernaturalist beliefs that were responsible for the dancing mania
and the possession crises of European nunneries. In modern-day Malaysia and Singapore,
for example, factory workers are often drawn from rural communities steeped in beliefs
about the spirit world. Those who find it hard to adjust to the regimentation of factory life
sometimes enter a dissociative state in which they behave in a manner shaped by their
cultures understanding of spirit possession. MPI may arise where fellow-workers share the
same beliefs and are also experiencing severe psychological strain. These outbreaks are
often brought to an end with a religious ritual involving the slaughter of a goat (Phoon, 1982).
In both Western and non-Western settings, mass motor hysteria usually occurs in schools.
In 1962, for example, several girls at a mission school near Lake Tanganyika developed a
compulsion to laugh and cry by turns. The affliction soon spread to neighbouring populations
(Rankin & Philip, 1963). Similar outbreaks of laughing have been recorded in both Zambia and
Uganda. In fact, schools in central Africa are especially prone to outbreaks of mass motor
hysteria. Late in 2008 several girls in a Tanzanian school responded to the pressure of taking
important exams by dissociating: some fainted, while other sobbed, yelled or ran around the
school.
In other cases, conversion symptoms predominate. Thus in 2006 around 600 students in
an emotionally austere all-girls school in Mexico City developed paralysis and nausea lasting
days or weeks. Analogous forms of MPI have been described in European and North
American schools. In a school in North Carolina in 2002 a dozen pupils experienced seizures
or other paroxysmal episodes over the course of four months (Roach and Langley, 2004). In
many such cases, the victims receive extensive medical treatment before a failure to identify
a pathogenic cause leads to a diagnosis of MPI.
More properly described as mass hysteria are cases in which groups of people act
upon beliefs which gain exaggerated credence in times of social and economic distress. For
example, parts of south-east Asia are periodically struck by epidemics of a fear among men
and women that their genitals are shrinking into their bodies. Koro is fuelled by a belief in
the existence of an evil spirit that causes genital retraction. Death is said to ensue once the
penis, nipples or vulva have fully disappeared into the body: hence men have been known to
drive pegs through their penises in the attempt to prevent complete retraction (Bartholomew,
2001). A similar phenomenon has been recorded in parts of western Africa where men claim
their penises to have been shrunk or stolen through evil magic. Individuals accused of
stealing or shrinking genitals are sometimes beaten to death or lynched: at least 14
suspected penis-thieves were killed in Nigeria in 2001 (Dzokoto & Adams, 2005).
Mass anxiety hysteria and mass motor hysteria can be hard to distinguish from the effects
of actual exposure to environmental hazards. Experts have therefore identified several
features that are indicative of a psychogenic origin for a sudden outbreak of illness symptoms
in a group of people. These include the lack of a plausible organic basis, their occurrence in
a relatively closed group, and the prior existence of high levels of stress. It is always
necessary, however, to test fully for potential toxic or pathogenic exposures. This point is
underscored by a case in 1990 when several children at a London primary school fell sick
with typical symptoms of MPI: nausea, vomiting and abdominal pain and over-breathing. It
looked like a classic case of hysteria. However, it turned out that they were actually suffering
from poisoning from pesticides used on cucumbers (Bartholomew, 2001).

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