5 mysterious psychosis covering towns and villages, and then disappeared

Medieval dancing plague. In 1374, dozens of villages along the Rhine were covered by psychosis-fatal disease called dancing plague or scientific horeomaniya. Hundreds of people danced in the streets to the beat of unheard by anyone (except, perhaps, from the dancers themselves) music. They hardly ate and slept, sometimes for days, until they bled sore legs refused to hold them. Then the plague disappeared, almost as suddenly as it had begun. Next epidemic appeared in Strasbourg in 1518 when a woman named trophies suddenly came out into the street and began to dance without stopping a few days. During the week it is joined to another 34 people, and by the end of the month the dancers rose to 400. Dozens of people fell and died of a heart attack, stroke or exhaustion. In this case, the disease went away suddenly. Scientists have tried to explain this mystery. For a time, the most likely explanation was that people were poisoned bread infected by hallucinogenic mushroom that grows on rye stalks. If swallowed it causes cramps, fever and delirium.    John Waller, a professor of history at the University of Michigan, disagrees with this version - in both cases only about dancing and not cramping. With another popular theory that the victims have become part of some cult dance for Waller is also unconvincing. Professor Waller offers a theory: these were mass psychogenic (due to trauma) diseases caused by fear and depression. Both outbreaks were preceded by famine, crop damage, flooding, which could be interpreted as signs of an approaching biblical catastrophe. The horror of the supernatural was able to put people into a kind of trance. Moreover, horse dance is associated with the name of St. Vitus - Christian martyr, to whose statue if dancing, according to legend, it was possible to recover. That idea was already dancing in people's minds. All that was needed - one person to start the marathon. Strasburg psihoognishte not the last - in 1840 something happened in Madagascar.