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The 'Dancing Plague of 1518' story I heard on a podcast turned out to be mostly true after I dug into old city records in Strasbourg myself.
I spent a weekend reading translated town council logs from that year and found multiple witnesses describing dozens of people dancing uncontrollably for days, but I learned the real cause wasn't mass hysteria like everyone says it was a botched ergot fungus outbreak from contaminated rye bread that actually triggered it.
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logan5254mo ago
Rainfall records from that summer showed it was way wetter than normal, which lines up with the rye getting moldy before harvest. My grandmother used to tell me stories about her uncle who was a farmer and swore black bread was dangerous if it sat in damp cellars too long. Not saying that's proof of anything, just interesting how old folk knowledge can match up with modern findings. Ergot poisoning causes all kinds of weird symptoms like muscle twitching and hallucinations, so it makes sense people would start moving strangely and keep going. You'd need a time machine to be totally sure, but the weather data seems to back up that theory more than the mass panic one.
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aaron_perry4mo ago
Right, but the rye would have to be contaminated in the first place - ergot's a fungus that grows on the grain, not just any old dampness on bread. @logan525, your point about black bread is spot on though, since rye was literally the cheapest grain so that's what the poor folks would've been eating.
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