189. Dastardly Disco Fever

From the 7th to the  17th Century, mainland Europe was home to a peculiar and occasionally fatal condition, dancing mania. It was no disease, no bacteria, no virus. A particularly human condition, a social phenomenon. There are a few known cases, spread widely. It affected thousands of individuals, how and why this happened, unknown.

It really got moving in 1374, the first major outbreak occurred in Aachen, Germany. After that it spread around Europe. The first step of the dancing plague was often an individual. France, 1518, a woman called Frau Troffea took to the warm July air and danced the streets of Strasbourg. This fervent flailing went on for six days, by the end of that 34 other dancers were going toe-to-toe with the fever.

The numbers swelled, as they normally do. By the end of the month there were some 400 dancers on the streets. In the 1518 epidemic local physicians concluded the whole case was the result of ‘hot blood.’ The council even stepped in and attempted to alleviate the condition. The solution to dancing, was more dancing.

 

47. Island of The Dead

FACT: Many interesting things can be said about Venice, but one of them is outside of its main body, the Isola di San Michele, an island completely surrounded by high walls and water. Since the french occupation of Venice, it was decreed that burying the dead in the city was unhygienic, because the rotting corpses spread disease through the groundwater. So in 1807, the Isola di San Michele became the cemetery for the whole of Venice.

The island was actually formed by the joining of two smaller islands in 1837 and the walls were extended to surround the whole island, the walls were there to keep the inhabitants in, as they were prone to escaping and corrupting Venice. I’m talking about criminals, not zombies, for the island also served as a prison in its earlier years, before the number of bodies increased rapidly. By the turn of the 20th Century the island was acting as the main cemetery for the city, prisoners were relocated. Many years later the law of burying dead Venetians was abolished, but the bodies continued to arrive.

The custom was so embraced by Venetians that the practice still goes on today and the islands interior is quite a sight to see. The whole place is extremely organised, rows upon rows of tightly packed headstones line the island as well as impressive monuments and marble-topped crypts. The surprising thing about the island is actually how, pleasant it is. It plays host to the oldest Renaissance church in all of Venice and soft-footed Venetians maintain the expansive green lawns and giant, majestic cypress trees.