Dancing Mania, an epidemic disorder allied to Hysteria (q.v.). Imposture was often present, and the consequences often clearly showed impure motives; but there is also evidence that in many cases the convulsive movements were really beyond the control of the will, whatever may have been the original character of the motives that prompted them. Epidemics of this sort were common in Germany during the middle ages, and are formally described as early as the 14th century; in Italy, tarantism, a somewhat similar disease, was ascribed to the bite of a spider called the Tarantula (q.v.); and similar convulsive affections have been witnessed in Abyssinia and India, and even in comparatively modern times and in the most civilised countries in Europe, under the influence of strong popular excitement, especially connected with religious demonstrations. But the true dancing mania of the middle ages had its theatre chiefly in the crowded cities of Germany.
In July 1374 there appeared at Aix-la-Chapelle assemblies of men and women, who, excited by the wild and frantic, partly heathenish, celebration of the festival of St John, began to dance on the streets, screaming and foaming like persons possessed. The attacks of this mania were various in form, according to mental, local, or religious conditions. The dancers, losing all control over their movements, continued dancing in wild delirium, till they fell in extreme exhaustion, and groaned as in the agonies of death; some dashed out their brains against the walls around. When dancing they were insensible to external impressions, but haunted by visions, such as of being immersed in a sea of blood, which obliged them to leap so high, or of seeing the heavens open, and the Saviour enthroned with the Virgin Mary. The frenzy spread over many of the towns of the Low Countries. Troops of dancers, inflamed by intoxicating music, and followed by crowds, who caught the mental infection, went from place to place, taking possession of the religious houses, and pouring forth imprecations against the priests. The mania spread to Cologne, Metz, and Strasburg, giving rise to grave disorders, impostures, and profligacy. These countries were generally in a miserable condition; and arbitrary rule, corruption of morals, superstition, and insecurity of property, had already prepared the wretched people, debilitated by disease and bad food, to seek relief in the intoxication of an artificial delirium. Exorcism had been found an efficacious remedy at the commencement of the outbreak; and in the beginning of the 16th century, Paracelsus, that great reformer of medicine, applied immersion in cold water with great success. At the beginning of the 17th century it was already on the decline; and we now hear of it only in single cases as a sort of nervous affection. See CHOREA, CONVULSIONARIES, VITUS (St), and Hecker's Epidemics of the Middle Ages (Eng. trans. 3d. ed. 1859).