Post by Danny Angbashim (@db_angbashim)

THE DANCING PLAGUE OF 1518

One day in the July of 1518 in the town of Strasbourg in present day France a woman named Frau Troffea began dancing uncontrollably in the street. The next day and weeks that followed many other people joined her in the mysterious dancing.

With time the number of dancers swelled up to over 400. Many of them unable to stop danced themselves to exhaustion, injuries, heart attack and even deaths. As many as 100 deaths were recorded.

Local physicians unable to come up with any logical explanation for the strange act felt the cure lied in more dancing so the municipal authority actually erected stages, hired musicians and created more spaces for the dancers.

By September when the strange dancing abated as many as 100 dancers had danced to death!

What triggered this mystery dance? Till date nobody knows the answer.
But it happened during a period of serious stress occasioned by acute food shortages, prevalence of diseases and illnesses and economic meltdown. So some people believed these prevailing factors combined with fear and superstitions may have led to psychogenic illness i.e. mass hysteria. Perhaps.

With the ever rising number of families falling into starvation, inability to afford cost of treatment of the most basic diseases and fear from the present danger of kidnapping and terrorism nationwide will Nigerians at some point descend into some bizarre conduct? I pray not.

The best time for our political leaders to have acted by way of good governance to avert despair in the land was many years ago but the next best time is now.

God help us.

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