June 24, 2004

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  630 YEARS AGO TODAY

  
  

  

  
  

  Jun 24 1374

  
  

  In a sudden outbreak of Dancing Mania (aka "St. John's Dance"), people in the streets of Aix-la-Chapelle, Prussia experience terrible hallucinations and begin to jump and twitch uncontrollably until they collapse from exhaustion. Many of the sufferers are afflicted with frothing at the mouth, diabolical screaming, and sexual frenzy. The phenomenon lasts well into the month of July. Nowadays, ergot madness is suspected as being the ultimate cause of the disorder.

  
  

  Ergot is a fungal disease of rye that produces hallucinations and bizarre alterations of behavior, eventually leading to insanity or death by loss of limbs or epileptic seizures. This small brown fungus produces an array of dangerous chemicals, including LSD.

  
  

  The manic dancing spreads throughout France and the Low Countries. Crowds gathered, and religious ceremonies are performed in attempts to exorcise the demons. People offered prayer to St. Vitus and he soon became the patron saint of the dancers. The dancing manifested into an anti clerical protest in Liege when ravers began cursing the priests of that city. A few monasteries and towns were even overthrown. In the most severe cases, mad ravers would dance through the loss of a limb, pausing only for a moment to pick up the pitiful piece before resuming the dance until they collapsed to their deaths. For the fewer and more unfortunate they would survive to experience psychotic delusions, nervous spasms, convulsions, schizophrenia, and acute paranoia for the rest of their glorious lives.

  
  

  -fUSION 

  
  

   

  • 6:27 pm
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