Speaker 1: It was a week before the Holy Festival of Mary
Speaker 1: Magdalen on July fourteenth, fifteen eighteen, that Frau Trafea began
Speaker 1: her dance. One can picture her in the shadows of
Speaker 1: one of Strasbourg's half timbered houses, white linen cap limp
Speaker 1: with sweat, and her skirt and apron swaying as she
Speaker 1: jumped awkwardly from foot to foot. Despite pleas from her
Speaker 1: husband to desist, Frau Trafea went on dancing into the
Speaker 1: evening in front of a crowd growing all the time
Speaker 1: in size and bewilderment. As the shadows of buildings and
Speaker 1: onlookers lengthened and she could barely raise her limbs, Frau
Speaker 1: Trafea collapsed into sleep. The repose only lasted until she
Speaker 1: had recouped enough energy to restart her dance. Early the
Speaker 1: next day she resumed. Frau Trafea went on dancing for
Speaker 1: a third and then a fourth day. At this point
Speaker 1: the authorities intervened. She danced interminably, apparently heedless of the
Speaker 1: terrible bruises, bloody sores, and lacerations that must have formed
Speaker 1: on her feet after so many days of near constant movement.
Speaker 1: We don't know what frautraff you thought, or what she
Speaker 1: said while she danced, whether she screamed for help or
Speaker 1: maintained a troubled silence. We can be fairly sure though,
Speaker 1: that she was in genuine distress.
Speaker 2: Oh spooky, so spooky.
Speaker 1: So that is from the book called The Dancing Plague
Speaker 1: by John Waller, and that's the subject of this episode
Speaker 1: of this podcast, Will Kill You.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Hi, I'm Erin Welsh.
Speaker 2: And I'm Erin Alvin Updike.
Speaker 1: Welcome.
Speaker 2: I'm so excited for today's episode. I know, I've been
Speaker 2: like barely able to contain myself.
Speaker 1: It's really exciting. I mean, we've been wanting to do
Speaker 1: another medical mystery type thing since encephalitis lethargica. Yep. But
Speaker 1: and so I'm really excited to do this because a
Speaker 1: lot of people have asked us about it or like
Speaker 1: sent us email saying, hey, have you read this? Have
Speaker 1: you heard of this?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Which, okay, let me tell you. I have to
Speaker 2: tell you the thing that I'm There's several things that
Speaker 2: I'm most excited to talk about. But one is the
Speaker 2: fact that so we're doing the format of this differently
Speaker 2: than our normal episodes. It'll be more similar to the
Speaker 2: format of art encephalitis lethargic episode, but even a little
Speaker 2: different than that.
Speaker 1: I feel like, just join us for the ride.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's gonna be great. But Erin, I know absolutely
Speaker 2: nothing about the dancing plague. Oh really, Like I had
Speaker 2: never ever heard of it until you suggested this a
Speaker 2: very long time ago, and then we've had a lot
Speaker 2: of people, you know, message us like, hey, can you
Speaker 2: do the dancing plagu Can you do the dancing plague?
Speaker 2: I I know literally nothing about that, and I was
Speaker 2: so careful, like you told me the hypotheses to research,
Speaker 2: so that's what I researched, and I was very careful
Speaker 2: to never google anything to do with the dancing plague.
Speaker 1: Oh so good. Oh so this is gonna be a
Speaker 1: very interesting episode. It's going to be so.
Speaker 2: Fun because I have these things that I researched that
Speaker 2: I'm like, I have no idea how this ties in.
Speaker 2: I can make some guesses based on the fact that
Speaker 2: it's called a dancing plague, but like, oh my gosh,
Speaker 2: I just can't wait to hear all about this and
Speaker 2: then just do some hypothesizing with you.
Speaker 1: Yes, okay, So to ease this conversation along. Yeah, should
Speaker 1: we pour ourselves a quarantini? Quarantini?
Speaker 2: I think we ought to.
Speaker 1: Okay. This week's quarantini is called Boogie Fever, of course,
Speaker 1: and it has tequila the dancing juice. Yep, it has
Speaker 1: guava juice.
Speaker 2: Because it's pretty and dasty.
Speaker 1: It has lime juice, sparkling water mint, and then garnish
Speaker 1: it with a flower because it looks pretty.
Speaker 2: Why not.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's also delicious.
Speaker 2: So we will post the full recipe for that quarantini
Speaker 2: as well as our non alcoholic placy Bata on our website.
Speaker 2: This podcast will kill you dot Com and all of
Speaker 2: our social media channels, so make sure you check those out. Perfect,
Speaker 2: and we have new merch if you haven't seen our
Speaker 2: awesome water bottles, they are very very cool and new
Speaker 2: smelling soap which smells so good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, check it out. And our shirts should be stalked
Speaker 1: at the point.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, if not now, very so.
Speaker 1: I think in January yeah yep.
Speaker 2: Okay, so oh we got some gifts from people, but
Speaker 2: I haven't opened them. Yeah, open them because it's Christmas.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, oh my god. Okay, So Kimberly Baxter sent
Speaker 2: us these adorable little knit microbe Oh.
Speaker 1: My gosh, that's right, she knitted little h one n one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're a little swag.
Speaker 2: They're so cute and the little beads are hes and ends.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, oh, thank you.
Speaker 1: Kimberly's so so adorable.
Speaker 2: And then also, this is a long belated but Nick
Speaker 2: Davis sent us an amazing box full of quarantiny supplies
Speaker 2: and accustomized quarantiny.
Speaker 1: That's incredible, it's so incredible. We so much.
Speaker 2: We're thrilled. We haven't been in the same place to
Speaker 2: drink it together yet, but rest assured we will.
Speaker 1: Yes, absolutely so, thank you so much.
Speaker 2: Thanks Kimberly, you're too nice to us.
Speaker 1: That's Christmas ever. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, I think that's all of our business now.
Speaker 1: Excellent. I guess we should jump right in.
Speaker 2: Yes, let's dance right in. Should we take a quick break.
Speaker 1: First, let's do it. Okay. So you heard from our
Speaker 1: first hand account a little bit about the fifteen eighteen
Speaker 1: dancing plague in Strasbourg. But there's so much more to tell. Okay,
Speaker 1: so let's pick up where we left off in the beginning. Okay,
Speaker 1: but before I start, I want to say that this
Speaker 1: story you're about to hear here almost certainly happened. Like
Speaker 1: the events, the baseline events really did happen, no matter
Speaker 1: how bizarre it sounds. But what's less clear, and the
Speaker 1: point of our episode today is why it.
Speaker 2: Happened, right, Like, what the heck happened to?
Speaker 1: Right this happen?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: What's going on? Okay, So let's set the stage a
Speaker 1: little bit. So Strasbourg is in present day France, sitting
Speaker 1: close to the German border. Back then it was part
Speaker 1: of the Holy Roman Empire, and it looks really lovely
Speaker 1: in pictures. It's like a little close to the mountains.
Speaker 1: Maybe we should add it to our TBWKY vacation destination. Yes,
Speaker 1: and the dancing plague that we're going to focus on,
Speaker 1: because spoilers, it's not the only one who is the
Speaker 1: one that happened in fifteen eighteen in this town. Okay,
Speaker 1: what were the early fifteen hundreds like in Strasbourg?
Speaker 2: Probably dirty and smelly like everywhere.
Speaker 1: Exactly grim, just really grim. As you may remember from
Speaker 1: our syphilis episode, that disease by this point was sweeping Europe.
Speaker 1: So like the late fourteen hundreds, early fifteen hundreds is
Speaker 1: when it kind of went everywhere. A plague like the
Speaker 1: actual bubonic plague would swoop in every few decades to
Speaker 1: carry off some proportion of the population. And then what
Speaker 1: goes better with plague and disease and syphilis than famine?
Speaker 1: Of course, death was around every corner, and to deal
Speaker 1: with this constant threat of death, many people turned to
Speaker 1: religion because science as an explanation for things that happened
Speaker 1: to you wasn't really happening yet, like it wasn't enjoyed yet. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and at this time, the religion that dominated this region
Speaker 1: was a super fiery, demon fearing Bible beating Christianity with
Speaker 1: a very stark hierarchy. So if you were part of
Speaker 1: the clergy, you held the power and the answers and
Speaker 1: the wealth, and the people like peasants and so on,
Speaker 1: they turned to the Church for guidance and they would
Speaker 1: do this especially so during trying times, which is like
Speaker 1: all the time in the fifteen hundreds. Okay, so what
Speaker 1: was going on in Strasbourg around this time? Specifically in
Speaker 1: fifteen fourteen, there was a terrible winter that frosted and
Speaker 1: blunted the crops and led to many people just straight
Speaker 1: up freezing to death, oh my gosh. And then two
Speaker 1: years later, a horrible harvest and another bitter winter led
Speaker 1: not just to people dying of freezing to death, but
Speaker 1: also a huge amount of resentment and unease, resentment particularly
Speaker 1: towards the church. So prices for grain had more than
Speaker 1: doubled over the past few years, and people were getting
Speaker 1: resentful of the Church's demands for tithes and fees and whatnot.
Speaker 1: And there were active rebellions actually to try to overthrow
Speaker 1: the church or the clergy, oh, which is kind of interesting,
Speaker 1: but none of them succeeded, all right. So then in
Speaker 1: fifteen seventeen, which is the year before the Dancing plague,
Speaker 1: that year was dubbed by one chronicler as simply the
Speaker 1: bad year. So imagine this one year in the sea
Speaker 1: of bad years.
Speaker 2: So it was very bad, very bad.
Speaker 1: There was malnutrition, starvation, smallpox epidemic, the English sweat so
Speaker 1: the sweating sickness, which is another historical medical mystery. We
Speaker 1: touched on it a bit in the hauntavirus episode, yeah,
Speaker 1: but we didn't really go too much into it. So
Speaker 1: that would dominate the region in Strasbourg that in fifteen
Speaker 1: eighteen or fifteen seventeen. So, needless to say, many people
Speaker 1: in Strasbourg had their faith severely shaken, kind of felt
Speaker 1: they were being punished for something. Okay, So now we
Speaker 1: arrive in fifteen eighteen Strasbourg, things don't look so great,
Speaker 1: even though it's July and probably gorgeous weather. Except it wasn't.
Speaker 1: It was unbearably hot. It was like very hot and
Speaker 1: very dry. So when Frau Trafea started her dance, rumors
Speaker 1: of the devil's involvement circulated, but they were quickly overruled
Speaker 1: by the majority, who believed that her uncontrollable dance resulted
Speaker 1: from like a divine retribution, so punishment for faithlessness and
Speaker 1: immoral behavior and sin and blah blah blah, and so
Speaker 1: a lot of this.
Speaker 2: It had to do with God, but it wasn't demonic
Speaker 2: possession specifically, right, okay.
Speaker 1: Right, So it was more of like this is you
Speaker 1: are being punished by God, okay. And this was probably
Speaker 1: fortunate in a way that it wasn't viewed as being
Speaker 1: satanic or a demonic possession, because then she would probably
Speaker 1: have been burnt at the stake or something.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And so under this punishment Frau Trafia danced for
Speaker 1: six days NonStop, basically only to sleep and then eat,
Speaker 1: and then kept dancing and dancing against her husband's wishes
Speaker 1: and insistence. And it's funny because like the first chronicler
Speaker 1: that really came, the first well known chronicler that wrote
Speaker 1: a lot about the dancing plague came to Strasbourg I
Speaker 1: think around seven six or seven years or no, seven
Speaker 1: or eight years after fifteen eighteen, and it was his
Speaker 1: name was Paracelsus, and I've talked about him before as
Speaker 1: like a medical historian chronicler, and he hated women, and
Speaker 1: so it's really like very interesting. He's like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: these women are just dancing because they're like loose women
Speaker 1: and loose morals and blah blah blah blah blah. They
Speaker 1: want to listen to their husbands exactly. He was like, oh,
Speaker 1: she she only started dancing to infuriate her husband. Whatever. Anyway,
Speaker 1: as Frau Trafia danced, more and more people arrived to
Speaker 1: gawk at her, and then, as I said in the firsthand,
Speaker 1: the medical authorities intervened, and what that meant was that
Speaker 1: she was ruled to be sent to Severn severnez seven
Speaker 1: in which is like a nearby place in the mountains
Speaker 1: where there was a shrine to Saint Vitash and the
Speaker 1: other name that was given to this dancing plague besides
Speaker 1: choreo mania choreo from like dance choreography and stuff, meaning
Speaker 1: like yeah, woh uh huh, all right, this is Saint
Speaker 1: Vitas's dance. Okkay. So who was Saint Vidas and why
Speaker 1: would our dancing queen be sent to his shrine? Okay? So,
Speaker 1: Saint Vidas was a Sicilian martyr who didn't die after
Speaker 1: being burned in a cauldron of lead and tar or
Speaker 1: after being attacked by lions, and he didn't succumb to
Speaker 1: the temptations of a bunch of seductive dancers to go
Speaker 1: back to Roman gods.
Speaker 2: Sorry, he was burned in a cauldron of lead and tar.
Speaker 2: Die Okay, I mean it was like the year three hundred,
Speaker 2: so okay, okay, citation needed now.
Speaker 1: He was a super popular saint. Actually, people prayed to
Speaker 1: him to be healed from epilepsy and also people struggling
Speaker 1: to conceive. Back then, people viewed saints not just as
Speaker 1: being able to heal them of various things, but also
Speaker 1: as have the power to inflict punishment in sort of
Speaker 1: the opposite way that they would heal. So if Saint
Speaker 1: Vitas could cure epilepsy, he could also cause it.
Speaker 2: Oh interesting.
Speaker 1: So Saint Vitas somehow became associated with these outbreaks of spontaneous,
Speaker 1: uncontrollable dancing sometime during the fourteen hundreds, and the only
Speaker 1: way to stop the dancing was to go to his
Speaker 1: shrine and ask for help or be ordered to the shrine.
Speaker 1: And so that's how Frautrafia found herself there. Unfortunately, we
Speaker 1: have no idea what happened to her after that, in
Speaker 1: in all likelihood she stopped dancing and returned exhausted to Strasbourg.
Speaker 1: But whatever happened to her was overshadowed by what was
Speaker 1: happening all across the town, which is that people had
Speaker 1: started to dance. At first, it was just dozens of
Speaker 1: people this frenzied sort of like it was actually dancing,
Speaker 1: like it was described as dance, huh. And they would
Speaker 1: move to music in a circle until they until they dropped,
Speaker 1: basically like they would dance from as soon as they
Speaker 1: woke up to as soon as they to the when
Speaker 1: they just collapsed from exhaustion.
Speaker 2: So they're not just like flicking about their dancing.
Speaker 1: Right, they're actually dancing, okay. Frautrafia being the first one,
Speaker 1: happened in mid July, and then within a month it
Speaker 1: had turned to hundreds of people.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: By the end of the plague, around four hundred people
Speaker 1: had this uncontrollable dancing. This isn't a town of twenty thousand,
Speaker 1: which is like, okay, not a small amount.
Speaker 2: No, that's I mean, four hundred people in a town
Speaker 2: of anything is a lot to be dancing.
Speaker 1: And they like they.
Speaker 2: According to chroniclers, did not want to be dancing.
Speaker 1: They did not want to be dancing so well, a
Speaker 1: lot of chroniclers described them as sort of being in
Speaker 1: like a trance like state or or or at least
Speaker 1: that's our modern interpretation of it. Okay, like their minds
Speaker 1: were lost to them is sort of what would have
Speaker 1: been described. And it's not like they were like they
Speaker 1: weren't entirely lucid, it appears.
Speaker 2: Right, so okay, yeah, my gosh, this is so bizarre.
Speaker 1: It's so bizarre, and not everyone escaped, like not everyone
Speaker 1: would just dance and dance and then get tired and stop,
Speaker 1: like This was a relentless entrance dancing that people could
Speaker 1: not seem to stop, no matter how much they wanted
Speaker 1: to or how much they they were threatened with fines
Speaker 1: or losing their dignity.
Speaker 2: Can I ask a question, yes, of course, and you
Speaker 2: might be answering this, but I need to just know
Speaker 2: this now. Were they all dancing together? Was it like
Speaker 2: one so Frau Trophia started this and then the next person?
Speaker 2: Were they in the same vicinity as her? How did
Speaker 2: next people start? And then was it like four hundred
Speaker 2: people all in the same area that were dancing. Was
Speaker 2: it one giant dance party that no one wanted to
Speaker 2: be a part of?
Speaker 1: I mean kind of yes, actually the to the one
Speaker 1: giant dance party. So I don't know exactly, and I
Speaker 1: don't know if it's if it's in any chronicles exactly
Speaker 1: how the next people got started. It's just sort of
Speaker 1: like more people started to dance, okay. And so at
Speaker 1: the very beginning it was viewed as a medical condition,
Speaker 1: which is kind of interesting because they when they referred
Speaker 1: to it, they use the word for plague rather than
Speaker 1: the word for curse, which would have implied like a
Speaker 1: spiritual condition.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the.
Speaker 1: Town council, or what was in effect of the town council.
Speaker 1: They decided, Okay, this is a medical condition, we're going
Speaker 1: to treat it medically. And they treated it with like
Speaker 1: like needs.
Speaker 2: Like oh, so, like, let's dance.
Speaker 1: They constructed a wooden stage, they hired musicians, they brought
Speaker 1: in dance and they were like, just keep dancing, just
Speaker 1: get it out of your system. Stop it. Are you
Speaker 1: seriously serious? And then they're like, I get it.
Speaker 2: You just need to dance it out. You just will
Speaker 2: make it happen.
Speaker 1: I mean I kind of like that attitude, just like
Speaker 1: dance it just come on.
Speaker 2: I can relate to needing to dance it out.
Speaker 1: I relate. But pretty soon, like within a few days,
Speaker 1: they're like, oh no, oh no, this is bad. This
Speaker 1: is not what we should have done. Like more people
Speaker 1: were joining in, more people were dancing, and then people
Speaker 1: started to die.
Speaker 2: People died, people died people dancing.
Speaker 1: Yes, oh my gosh, Aaron. So at the there was
Speaker 1: one It's it's hard to say exactly how many people died,
Speaker 1: but one chronicler wrote that at the peak of the epidemic,
Speaker 1: fifteen people died every day. What and so that that
Speaker 1: has to be an exaggeration because the plague affected around
Speaker 1: four hundred people, and so if it if it every
Speaker 1: day like that would imply multiple days. That would be
Speaker 1: like hundreds of people dying.
Speaker 2: Yeah, how long did this whole thing last?
Speaker 1: Around two months?
Speaker 2: Two months? That's yeah, that's like at least what sixty, No, fifteen?
Speaker 2: I can't do that math, Aaron, fifteen times sixty, that's
Speaker 2: a lot of people.
Speaker 1: Like, not everyone who dance died, for sure. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: so another person just wrote many people died, Okay, So
Speaker 1: and I think that like, if you're in the fifteen
Speaker 1: hundreds and you're a chronicler and you say many people
Speaker 1: died and you've seen things like plague and smallpox, it's
Speaker 1: a lot of people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, so well we don't know. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So then after it became pretty clear that hiring musicians
Speaker 1: and constructing a dance hall and like encouraging this was
Speaker 1: not going to work and actually was being more causing
Speaker 1: more problems.
Speaker 2: And this was all happening because the first person, she
Speaker 2: was kind of in like a town square type area.
Speaker 2: It sounded like like everyone came to watch her.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she was dancing outside like she was visible dancing
Speaker 1: public dancing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, public dancing, and then everyone like other people. This
Speaker 2: all started and then they were like, well, let's cure
Speaker 2: this by having a giant dance party. So then they
Speaker 2: brought in all these things and then it just kept
Speaker 2: escalating from there. Yes, okay, just making sure I understand. Ooh,
Speaker 2: this is good, Aaron.
Speaker 1: I mean, and these are like people who didn't look
Speaker 1: like they were enjoying themselves, like they had blister bloody feet.
Speaker 2: They were Rory Gilmore wasn't enjoying herself at the end
Speaker 2: of the twenty four hour dances on either, but.
Speaker 1: She wasn't and there are a lot of parallels with
Speaker 1: that and this so welcome on this episode of this podcast,
Speaker 1: We'll Killing Gilmore Girls Edition. Yeah, it is sort of like,
Speaker 1: it's really funny that there are a lot of comparisons
Speaker 1: made between these like dance plagues and like rave culture
Speaker 1: and the dance marathons of especially like the early nineteen
Speaker 1: hundreds or the first I.
Speaker 2: Didn't Dance Marathon you see LA dance Marathon?
Speaker 1: Did you last? Yeah?
Speaker 2: I did. It was great, It was really I enjoyed
Speaker 2: it a lot. My little brother came, we all did it.
Speaker 1: It was so so after obviously this wasn't working, this
Speaker 1: public dancing. They were like the town was like, okay,
Speaker 1: we've made a huge mistake and we are now outlawng dancing,
Speaker 1: and if you are seen publicly dancing, you'll be fined.
Speaker 1: And so it was just sort of like we're going
Speaker 1: to try the opposite now, okay, And that didn't really
Speaker 1: work either, shocking people still dance. People were still being
Speaker 1: infected by this dancing craze whatever, and so eventually they
Speaker 1: resorted to shuttling people either by wagon or by like
Speaker 1: or on foot to the shrine to Saint Vitus in
Speaker 1: the mountains, which is around thirty miles away, okay, and
Speaker 1: it kind of seemed to work. Like they're at Saint
Speaker 1: Vidas they were prayed over, they were given red shoes,
Speaker 1: like there was like some strange order for like a
Speaker 1: bunch of red shoes Dorothy, Dorothy and snow white and
Speaker 1: blah blah blah, like it's a very Yeah, there was
Speaker 1: something about the color red that was associated with like dancing,
Speaker 1: uncontrolled dancing and this like fervor. I don't know all
Speaker 1: right anyway, and so yeah, it kind of like this
Speaker 1: is kind of an abrupt end. But basically they went
Speaker 1: to the shrine. They most people recovered, but the trauma,
Speaker 1: you know, stayed with them for a long time. And
Speaker 1: for the people that had to witness this, and it
Speaker 1: didn't really fade into memory. People made drawings, they made paintings,
Speaker 1: they wrote stories. And you know, we're still talking about
Speaker 1: it today, huh. And I think you know that brings
Speaker 1: me to you because we're still talking about it because
Speaker 1: there it seems like such a bizarre event and hard
Speaker 1: to envision people having uncontrolled dancing until they died. Yes,
Speaker 1: and there have been several different hypotheses as to what
Speaker 1: caused this, like and we'll talk about them all. There's
Speaker 1: yes burgut, poisoning, conversion disorder, mass hysteria, and probably a
Speaker 1: couple others that I'm sure you're gonna tell me about.
Speaker 1: So let's hear it from you, Erin, tell me about
Speaker 1: these things. Let's all his mystery.
Speaker 2: All right. Let's what we'll do is we'll take a
Speaker 2: quick break and then we'll go through each of these
Speaker 2: hypotheses one at a time and we can debate them.
Speaker 1: Does that sound perfect? Love it?
Speaker 2: Okay? So Aaron, you had told me to research some
Speaker 2: specific things, right, Yes, these specific hypotheses. The ones I'm
Speaker 2: gonna tell you what you told me to research. Ergotism, Okay,
Speaker 2: which is ergot poisoning. We'll talk about it. Encephalitis, which,
Speaker 2: like I'm just gonna say right now, it's not that. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 2: we can briefly talk about that. Also, mass hysteria, which
Speaker 2: is a terrible term, but we'll talk about that. And
Speaker 2: Sydenham Korea, Well we can talk about that as well.
Speaker 2: So those are the four I know I can tell,
Speaker 2: based on my research one hundred percent, what the only
Speaker 2: thing that this could even possibly be. Yeah, okay, but
Speaker 2: let's go through these one at a time, starting with
Speaker 2: the absolute least likely. Okay, that sound fun.
Speaker 1: Sounds excellent.
Speaker 2: Okay, the most least likely is that a good way
Speaker 2: to say it?
Speaker 1: I think could just be the least likely.
Speaker 2: The least likely is encephalitis. Yeah. Uh, we've talked about
Speaker 2: encephalitis before. It is such a ridiculously broad term first
Speaker 2: of all, to just say encephalitis that I was like,
Speaker 2: I don't even have anything to research. I don't have
Speaker 2: any sources for you on encephalitis because it's not a
Speaker 2: single disease. Encephalitis means swelling of the brain. Most of
Speaker 2: the time it's viral, but tons of different things can
Speaker 2: cause it. So you can absolutely have symptoms that include seizures.
Speaker 2: That's the closest thing I can think of. That might
Speaker 2: be something like dancing plague, like uncontrolled movement.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Other than that, it's like headache, fever, vomiting, stiff neck,
Speaker 2: maybe hallucinations, et cetera, et cetera. So, yeah, it's absolutely
Speaker 2: not encephalitis.
Speaker 1: Cool that out of here.
Speaker 2: We should have a buzzer sound. I thought this is
Speaker 2: one ums down, all right. I bought this is too
Speaker 2: that it's definitely not h Sydenham. Korea or Korea, you
Speaker 2: could say it both ways. So do you know what
Speaker 2: this is?
Speaker 1: Erin only that only the in the Korea aspect of it.
Speaker 2: Okay, So the term Korea, And it was really interesting
Speaker 2: when you said choreography, because I don't know. I think
Speaker 2: I knew that a long time ago, but I didn't
Speaker 2: remember that to make the connection. The connection, I think
Speaker 2: I'm having too much fun. So the term Korea, it
Speaker 2: generally just means in large involuntary movements of usually the limbs,
Speaker 2: but also the facial the facial muscles. Right, So, Huntington
Speaker 2: disease is also characterized by Korea. Sydenham Korea is a
Speaker 2: specific form of Korea that happens as a result like
Speaker 2: following a strep throat infection a group A strep infection. Interesting,
Speaker 2: it's not entirely clear exactly what causes it, but it's
Speaker 2: pretty clear that similar to rheumatic fever and rheumatic heart disease,
Speaker 2: it's a result of antibodies that you make following this
Speaker 2: strep infection that then go on to infect your brain.
Speaker 1: But why just this type.
Speaker 2: So it's thought that it infects your brain stem, and
Speaker 2: so your brain stem has a lot to do with
Speaker 2: motor control and movement.
Speaker 1: And it's just by step type A group A strap.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, group A strap and group A strap. Like,
Speaker 2: there's a lot of auto antibodies that get made. That's
Speaker 2: why you also get rheumatic fever, rheumatic heart disease. Now
Speaker 2: there's thoughts that there could be something called PANDACE, but
Speaker 2: that's pretty controversial at this point. So, yeah, there's definitely
Speaker 2: a lot of auto antibodies that get made that can
Speaker 2: it made if you have a strep infection.
Speaker 1: That's untreated, gotcha.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So that's why when you like, especially because kids
Speaker 2: get strep throat like all the time. Yeah, it's really
Speaker 2: important to go get that diagnosed and treated because you
Speaker 2: can prevent all of these future complications if it's treated
Speaker 2: for the most part.
Speaker 1: Gotcha.
Speaker 2: So was this the dancing plague? Two thumbs down. Highly
Speaker 2: doubtful based on it sounds like most of the people
Speaker 2: that were involved were adults.
Speaker 1: Correct, they seem to be adults. I think they were
Speaker 1: largely women. Okay, that's the only but it does seem
Speaker 1: to be like all all age groups though.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna put an asterisk in that what you just said, yeslie,
Speaker 2: women Okay, okay, yeah, so that's then very highly unlikely.
Speaker 2: Also because what it sounds like you're saying is there
Speaker 2: were coordinated type movements. It wasn't just irregular type sort
Speaker 2: of non sense movements, right.
Speaker 1: No, it was it was dance like. It seemed to
Speaker 1: be structured, like they use different terms to describe epilepsy
Speaker 1: than they used to describe dance, for instance, right.
Speaker 2: Okay, So send in ham Korea. Okay, we've already very
Speaker 2: very quickly eliminated two of these hypotheses.
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, it's pretty yeah.
Speaker 2: Okay, So then ergotism. Yes, we're going to spend some
Speaker 2: time on this because I did a ton of research
Speaker 2: on them.
Speaker 1: Okay, good, because I have the huge section on this too.
Speaker 1: Oh great.
Speaker 2: Okay, So let's talk about what ergod is. Ergot is
Speaker 2: a fungus kind of, it's a group of fung guy
Speaker 2: kind of. It's a little bit weird and complicated. So
Speaker 2: when people talk about ergot, especially in the context of
Speaker 2: ergotism or ergot poisoning, they're talking specifically, for the most part,
Speaker 2: about a fungus called Claviceps purpuria.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is a fungus.
Speaker 2: That infects rye. It's actually a parasitic fungus. It grows
Speaker 2: into the rye like the ovum of the rye flower
Speaker 2: and then replaces the kernel.
Speaker 1: Oh cool.
Speaker 2: So this Claviceps fungus produces this little nugget within that
Speaker 2: flower that replaces like a kernel of rye for example.
Speaker 2: So the the ergot part of it is kind of
Speaker 2: that specific kernel. But then ergot is also a term
Speaker 2: used to refer to that whole group of fungi, So
Speaker 2: it's a little bit weird. Okay, does that make sense?
Speaker 1: Yeah, But in this for this episode, we'll talk about ergot,
Speaker 1: meaning the fungus.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, okay, okay, we're not going to talk in
Speaker 2: depth about the life cycle. It's very interesting. It's a
Speaker 2: plant parasite, so that's kind of the important part that
Speaker 2: you need to know. And the other thing is that
Speaker 2: ergot produces a ton of alkaloids. We've talked about alkaloids
Speaker 2: a lot in some of our crossover episodes with Matt
Speaker 2: candeis of indefensive plants, because alkaloids are organic compounds, so
Speaker 2: that means they are carbon based compounds that have basic
Speaker 2: nitrogen attached nitrogen atoms attached to it, that are really
Speaker 2: commonly produced by plants, bacteria, fungi, et cetera. These tend
Speaker 2: to be defensive compounds that plants and fungi produce, okay.
Speaker 1: And.
Speaker 2: In the case of ergot, they produce a bunch of
Speaker 2: different kinds of alkaloids. There are a couple Ergonavine, which
Speaker 2: is also called ergometrine. Don't ask me why, okay, Actually
Speaker 2: I'll tell you why. It's because it was discovered in
Speaker 2: multiple places at the same time, and they called it
Speaker 2: two different things. Classic classic so erganavine or agometrine, and
Speaker 2: then also ergotamine those are kind of the to biggest
Speaker 2: ones or the most common ones. But there's a whole
Speaker 2: bunch of different alkaloids that are produced by ERGOT and
Speaker 2: it turns out that these are rather similar in structure,
Speaker 2: and therefore in our bodies tend to have actions at
Speaker 2: serotonin receptors in our bodies. Okay, okay, most people have
Speaker 2: probably at least heard of the word serotonin. I'm guessing
Speaker 2: it gets a lot of press because it's called like
Speaker 2: the happy hormone sometimes so a lot of antidepressant medications.
Speaker 2: Their action is to increase the amount of serotonin in
Speaker 2: your brain. So serotonin is an important neurotransmitter. It does
Speaker 2: a lot of things in your brain. We don't really
Speaker 2: understand all of them, but they also importantly, there are
Speaker 2: serotonin receptors in other places than just your brain and
Speaker 2: central nervous system. There are serotonin receptors in your gut.
Speaker 2: In fact, a lot of serotonin is produced in your gut. Interesting,
Speaker 2: in your uterus, interesting, very important and I can't wait
Speaker 2: to tell you about it. Oh my gosh, and your
Speaker 2: smooth muscle. In other places like your blood vessels and
Speaker 2: things like that. Okay, I want to.
Speaker 1: Know I have so many questions, but I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: wait because I don't.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, here's the other thing I was so excited
Speaker 2: about for this episode. I knew you were gonna have
Speaker 2: so many questions, and my notes are so disorganized, but
Speaker 2: I have like sixteen sections where I just have asterisk
Speaker 2: with here's a question Aaron's probably gonna ask, and then
Speaker 2: the answer for it.
Speaker 1: I'm so predictable.
Speaker 2: I love it.
Speaker 1: It's so good.
Speaker 2: Okay. So it also so it's important to also know
Speaker 2: that dopamine, serotonin, histamine, all these things are kind of
Speaker 2: they can sometimes cross react on the same receptors, and
Speaker 2: so the ergot alkaloids can also react on a number
Speaker 2: of different receptors. Just the very specific serotonin in your
Speaker 2: brain receptors. Cool, okay, Okay, so that's the ergot alkaloids.
Speaker 2: They act on serotonin type receptors. I have a few
Speaker 2: side notes here because I got very excited when researching
Speaker 2: this because we actually use ergot alkaloids, specifically ergonovine and
Speaker 2: ergotumine ergnovine and er godtumine. We use them medically in
Speaker 2: two main areas. Ergonovine I'm on my obegine rotation right now.
Speaker 2: We just talked about ergonovine. Oh my gosh, the day
Speaker 2: before I was researching ergot alkaloids for this episode.
Speaker 1: Uh, stars aligning. I know.
Speaker 2: It's so exciting. It's like I was doing work I
Speaker 2: was supposed to be doing. So one of the main
Speaker 2: things that we use ergonovine for is to uh improve
Speaker 2: or control postpartum hemorrhage because it turns out that there's
Speaker 2: so many of those receptors in the uterus. Ergonovine attaches
Speaker 2: very strongly to those receptors and causes uterine contraction and
Speaker 2: increased muscle tone of the uterus. Really yeah, I know,
Speaker 2: isn't that fascinating?
Speaker 1: How did anyone even figure that out? I don't know.
Speaker 2: But so ergot has been used like throughout history for
Speaker 2: like uterine type no.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah yeah yeah throughout history yeah yeah yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totes. Okay. Then there's also ergotamine, which is the
Speaker 2: other most common alkaloid that is used commonly today for
Speaker 2: the treatment and prevention of migraines. So migraines, A lot
Speaker 2: of treatment for migraines. Uh. It's thought that migraines have
Speaker 2: to do with like vasodilation in the brain and increasing
Speaker 2: pressure in your brain blood vessels. So you treat it
Speaker 2: with vasoconstrictors that kind of specifically target those blood vessels
Speaker 2: in your head, and that can reduce and it can
Speaker 2: actually like abort migraines if you get it early enough. Really,
Speaker 2: and so ergotamine is one of the drugs that we
Speaker 2: can use for like prevention and treatment of migraines.
Speaker 1: That's amazing, I know, also.
Speaker 2: Medically, not medically, but recreationally. LSD yes is very similar
Speaker 2: in structure to the ergot alkaloids. So all of these
Speaker 2: ergot alkaloids have what's called the lysergic acid backbone. That's
Speaker 2: the name of like the main structure of all these alkaloids.
Speaker 2: LSD is lysergic acid DIETHYLAMIDEK. So that's LSD. Yeah, So
Speaker 2: it's not produced naturally by ergot LSD is a synthetic
Speaker 2: derivative of lysergic acid. But if you think about the
Speaker 2: fact that LSD causes like massive hallucinations, right, like huge
Speaker 2: amount of halluciningetic effect. So it's not unreasonable to think
Speaker 2: that poisoning by ergot can cause hallucinations. Because we know
Speaker 2: that LSD can cause that, and it's not that different
Speaker 2: in form or structure from LSD. Right. And because we're
Speaker 2: talking about a fungus that grows on a plant, we
Speaker 2: know from all of our crossovers with MATT that the
Speaker 2: ratios and amounts of these different types of alkaloids is
Speaker 2: going to differ a lot between and among different individual
Speaker 2: fungi and different strains of the fungus or the plant
Speaker 2: that it's growing on. Right, because it's gonna also depend
Speaker 2: largely on the environment in which it's grown, how many
Speaker 2: of these alkaloids they produce, what specific types of alkaloids,
Speaker 2: and in what ratios. Okay, cool, So that's kind of
Speaker 2: ergot like an overall picture of ergot and its alkaloids
Speaker 2: how they're used today. So what happens if you get
Speaker 2: or got poisoning? Yeah? Okay, So when one ingests ergot
Speaker 2: infected rye. Rye is the most common grain that God infects,
Speaker 2: but it can also infect like rice, other grasses. It
Speaker 2: can infect a lot of different monocots. There are three
Speaker 2: main syndromes that you can get from ergot poisoning. Most
Speaker 2: of the literature says two, but more recent literature divides
Speaker 2: it into three.
Speaker 1: Okay, two.
Speaker 2: Yeah, gangren is ergotism. Gang green is like if you
Speaker 2: imagine your limb turning black and then falling off. Yes,
Speaker 2: that's gangreen and tarot ergotic and taro meaning your gut.
Speaker 2: So you can have a form of ergotism that's more
Speaker 2: specific just to gastrointestinal symptoms. Okay, and convulsive ergotism.
Speaker 1: Right, So the gut makes sense and the convulsive makes sense.
Speaker 1: Why does it cause gangreen? Is that one of big
Speaker 1: questions questions?
Speaker 2: No, but we'll talk about it. That's one of the
Speaker 2: things I will of course explain. So the remember I
Speaker 2: said that one of the uses of the ergot alkaloid
Speaker 2: is for vasoconstriction in your brain.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm.
Speaker 2: Okay, so we know that ergot alkaloids can cause vasoconstriction.
Speaker 1: Ohta, If you.
Speaker 2: Have vasoconstriction in the small vessels of your limbs, that
Speaker 2: can lead to necrosis, which is tissue death. Which necrosis
Speaker 2: on a large scale is what gangreen is. It's death
Speaker 2: of a large amount of tissue. With or without you
Speaker 2: can once that tissue starts dying, it's very easy to
Speaker 2: get a superimposed bacterial infection on top of that. So
Speaker 2: gangrenous Ergotism can become so severe that you can lose
Speaker 2: entire limbs. Entire limbs or parts of limbs will die
Speaker 2: to the point where if you just hit them, they
Speaker 2: will fall off completely with very little bleeding at the
Speaker 2: site where the tissue kind of falls off from, because
Speaker 2: all that tissue is also dead.
Speaker 1: That's horrifying.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's really gnarly, so gangreness. Ergotism is also
Speaker 2: called Saint Anthony's fire mm hmm, because it's not just
Speaker 2: a chill process of your limbs slowly dying, like, oh, no,
Speaker 2: big deal, it's just slowly not that Okay, that's obviously
Speaker 2: a massively huge deal. But it's also not like a
Speaker 2: painless process, right. Uh. This is also associated with very
Speaker 2: intense neuropathic pain, so nerve type pain, these violent burning
Speaker 2: pains that shoot through your limbs. Yeah, and back when,
Speaker 2: first of all, we didn't they didn't know exactly what
Speaker 2: caused ergotism or how to prevent it from infecting grains
Speaker 2: and how to like separate it from the rye. And
Speaker 2: back in medieval Europe they used rye for everything, right, right,
Speaker 2: Like all their bread was made of rye. Everything was
Speaker 2: made of rye. So apparently this, this forman gangreness ergotism
Speaker 2: was so common and had such specific symptoms that that
Speaker 2: that's why it got its own name, Saint Anthony's Fire.
Speaker 1: Uh huh.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I think that's pretty interesting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I have a little bit about Saint Anthony
Speaker 1: and oh the whole thing. Yeah, oh cool.
Speaker 2: Okay, so then let's talk about the convulsive form of ergotism.
Speaker 2: This is most likely more what people were thinking when
Speaker 2: they thought the dancing plague might be associated with ergotism, right, right,
Speaker 2: because it wasn't like people were dancing and then legs
Speaker 2: were falling Well maybe legs were falling off.
Speaker 1: They weren't though, So that's something that's like I'll talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about sort of the the evidence pro
Speaker 1: and against or whatever, but in terms of contemporary accounts,
Speaker 1: but perfect, yeah, there isn't. There doesn't seem to be like,
Speaker 1: oh so and so's leg fell off. Yeah, it's just
Speaker 1: the more of the convulsive thing. But do you know
Speaker 1: the proportion of gangernous versus convulsive?
Speaker 2: This was one of the questions not just what is
Speaker 2: the proportion, but what determines whether you get gangreness or convulsive?
Speaker 1: Right form is it different strains are more prone to some.
Speaker 2: We have absolutely no idea, quite honestly, is what it
Speaker 2: seems like.
Speaker 1: Because there was something though that I read something that
Speaker 1: was like strains that are east of like in eastern Europe,
Speaker 1: tend to be more convulsive and west as gangreness.
Speaker 2: In the past, in Germany, people west of the Rhine
Speaker 2: River usually got gangreness ergotism. East of the Rhine, they
Speaker 2: tended to get convulsive. So it's been suggested that it
Speaker 2: might be due to chemical differences in the different strains
Speaker 2: of fungus, but there's been at least one study that
Speaker 2: showed that that wasn't the case, Like, there isn't that
Speaker 2: big of a difference in the chemical composition of the alkaloids.
Speaker 2: To specifically explain that, someone else had suggested it might
Speaker 2: be concomin at vitamin A deficiency, So if you're also
Speaker 2: vitamin A deficient, that then you would be more likely
Speaker 2: to get the convulsive form. But that also doesn't seem
Speaker 2: to hold water either. It's not into entirely clear. What's
Speaker 2: interesting is that within an outbreak, like especially in more
Speaker 2: recent outbreaks, it's often the case that some people will
Speaker 2: get gangreness and some people will get convulsive, but it's
Speaker 2: very rare for someone to get both gangreness and convulsive
Speaker 2: at the same time.
Speaker 1: But even within the same outbreak, you don't get both. Interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So my guess would be it probably does have
Speaker 2: a lot to do with the combination of alkaloids, but
Speaker 2: it might not be as easy to separate, like this
Speaker 2: strain versus that strain. It might just be very environmentally dependent,
Speaker 2: like growing in this type of environment, you might be
Speaker 2: more likely to get this combination of alkaloids, et cetera.
Speaker 2: But then it also probably has to do with individual susceptibility,
Speaker 2: so there's probably some combination effect going on. So with
Speaker 2: the convulsive type, I will say that you often also
Speaker 2: get GI effects. Okay, so nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, this is
Speaker 2: really common, especially early on in convol ergotism. But then
Speaker 2: you will get more of that neuropathic like pins and
Speaker 2: needle sensations. What's really common is something called formication. Ooh, well,
Speaker 2: not forlornication. So that's the sensation that ants are crawling
Speaker 2: underneath your skin.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, like form like okay, yeah, like.
Speaker 2: The family name for ants. Yeah, okay. Then you'll also
Speaker 2: get like small muscle twitches, large muscle spasms, convulsions, you
Speaker 2: can get whole body spasms, et cetera, et cetera. You
Speaker 2: can also get hallucinations, dementia, delirium mania. It can be
Speaker 2: really bad. So that's ergotism. What do you think, erin?
Speaker 1: Okay, So there are a couple of things I want
Speaker 1: to talk about because and this, I knew that ergotism
Speaker 1: was one of the things, and I didn't know anything
Speaker 1: about it except that it was a cause by a
Speaker 1: fungus and in in rye flower. So but there has
Speaker 1: been a lot of discussion about whether ergotism was the
Speaker 1: cause of dancing plaguey and Okay, so let's let's go
Speaker 1: through some of the things. So, first of all, there's
Speaker 1: this that that convulsive ergotism can cause these like jerky
Speaker 1: movements and whatever, convulsions and so on. But that's not
Speaker 1: how you would describe dance like, that's not and so
Speaker 1: the fact that they very clearly use the words for
Speaker 1: dance and dancing indicates probably not urgotism.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Secondly, Ergo, poisoning, as you said, doesn't affect every person
Speaker 1: in the same way, and it's not entirely predictive like
Speaker 1: you it come in. Some people could cause like you said,
Speaker 1: these hallucinations, and some people could be just having diarrhea.
Speaker 1: So ergot poisoning, yeah, it could cause hallucinations and maybe
Speaker 1: convulsed convulsions looking like dancing in an individual, but not
Speaker 1: four hundred people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well yeah, and it's not going to be called dancing.
Speaker 1: It's not going to be called dancing. And then the
Speaker 1: other thing is that people knew about ergot poisoning, like
Speaker 1: they knew what it was. It had been written about
Speaker 1: from I think the first instance had been written about
Speaker 1: in eight hundred and fifty seven, like the year eight
Speaker 1: or in fifty seven, and even around the area there
Speaker 1: were like where the rye flower went through pipes to
Speaker 1: be packed into bags. At the end of the pipes
Speaker 1: were these like horribly distorted faces that had been put
Speaker 1: there as a reminder, like historians think now it might
Speaker 1: be a reminder of the hallucinations that ergot poisoning can
Speaker 1: give you. Fascinating and so it's called Saint Anthony's Fire,
Speaker 1: like who was Saint Anthony? So it was this Catholic
Speaker 1: order of monks that were really talented at healing people
Speaker 1: who had the Holy Fire, and it probably was because
Speaker 1: they just left and had other sources of food.
Speaker 2: But yeah, most people. It's surprising that even people who
Speaker 2: had like very severe convulsive ergotism, the mortality rate was
Speaker 2: only ten to twenty percent, which is really low when
Speaker 2: you consider that at that time there was absolutely no
Speaker 2: treatment essentially, right. So and it's cumulative, right, yeah, it
Speaker 2: can be absolutely.
Speaker 1: Okay, So okay. So the fourth thing is that ergot
Speaker 1: poisoning can cause some of the symptoms maybe that we're
Speaker 1: described with the dancing plague, but it wouldn't give you
Speaker 1: the energy to dance on end for days after days
Speaker 1: to the point of death, like your extremities makes them
Speaker 1: numb maybe, or would restrict your ability to move or dance.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1: Probably not good poisoning.
Speaker 2: I say, definitely, two thumbs down.
Speaker 1: Two thumbs down. But we're not entirely done with the
Speaker 1: discussion of ergotism. If that's okay, No, we're not okay, good,
Speaker 1: because are you going to talk about what I think
Speaker 1: what I'm going to talk about.
Speaker 2: I'm ready to talk about what I know you're going.
Speaker 1: To talk about the Salean witch trials.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, yeah, amazing, I think I.
Speaker 2: Might have read the same paper as you when I
Speaker 2: was looking through your Sources.
Speaker 1: Nineteen seventy six by Yes Carporeal. Yeah yeah, okay, so yeah,
Speaker 1: so this this episode, we wanted to focus on the
Speaker 1: Dancing plague. But you can't really talk about Ergot poisoning
Speaker 1: without talking about the Salewich Trials. You can't because that's
Speaker 1: like one of the modern explanations for what was going on.
Speaker 1: All right, do you know? Well, I guess now that
Speaker 1: since you read that paper, you know more about the
Speaker 1: Salem Witch Trials.
Speaker 2: I know a little bit. I knew almost nothing except like, yes,
Speaker 2: the Salem Witch Trials happened.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the same I thought for like as a kid,
Speaker 1: I thought for the longest time, but it was in Salem, Oregon,
Speaker 1: So that's where they happened. I still have this, like
Speaker 1: very like this sense of Salem, Oregon being like a
Speaker 1: very spooky, haunted place. I don't really is I don't know.
Speaker 1: But so for you all out there listening, who may
Speaker 1: know just as much as we did before we started
Speaker 1: this episode about the Salemwich Trials, let's just give you
Speaker 1: some background. Okay, Yeah, So the Salemwich Trials took place
Speaker 1: in sixteen ninety two to sixteen ninety three in Salem, Massachusetts,
Speaker 1: not Oregon. And so in the early sixteen hundreds, the
Speaker 1: population there consisted mostly of these super religious people, pilgrims
Speaker 1: who had come to North America for religious freedom or whatever.
Speaker 1: But this brand of religion was pretty extreme and so
Speaker 1: but over the next hundred years, as the area became
Speaker 1: more and more populated, the population of the merchant class grew,
Speaker 1: and the merchant class being lighter on the religious side
Speaker 1: of things. So anyway, what all of these things led
Speaker 1: to be is that in the late sixteen hundreds in Salem,
Speaker 1: it was a pretty fractious town. There was a huge
Speaker 1: divide religiously politically, and there was a lot of infighting
Speaker 1: in this town. I think quarrelsome was one word I
Speaker 1: saw used to describe it. So neighbors were always fighting
Speaker 1: with neighbors over property lines or who didn't go to
Speaker 1: church that week, and there was always gossip and petty
Speaker 1: revenge being enacted. Oh and then there was witchcraft, which
Speaker 1: was this sort of it was like assumed to be
Speaker 1: a real thing, was not an uncommon accusation, and it
Speaker 1: was just part of the religious aspect, like not necessarily
Speaker 1: which craft itself, but like you know, communing with the
Speaker 1: devil and whatever else. Okay, so do you know around
Speaker 1: one hundred thousand people are thought to have been put
Speaker 1: to death for practicing witchcraft.
Speaker 2: One hundred thousand.
Speaker 1: Uh huh, around one hundred thousand people.
Speaker 2: And I had no idea it was that high.
Speaker 1: It was really high. And so this literal witch hunt
Speaker 1: had more or less died out in Europe by the
Speaker 1: mid sixteen hundreds, and in part due to scientific revolution.
Speaker 1: But Salem was a bit behind the times. Okay. So
Speaker 1: here we are in this quarrelsome town that firmly believes
Speaker 1: in witchcraft and is full of a bunch of people
Speaker 1: with a lot of time on their hands and petty
Speaker 1: revenge that they wanted to carry out. So it started
Speaker 1: when several young girls accused three women, Tituba, a slave
Speaker 1: from the West Indies, Sarah Good, a poor woman who
Speaker 1: didn't go to church, and Sarah Osborne, who also didn't
Speaker 1: go to church, and she had also remarried an indentured servant.
Speaker 1: So anyway, these were sort of these women did not
Speaker 1: have a lot of standing in the community. So the
Speaker 1: accuser claimed that the invisible spirit of the witch would pinch, choke,
Speaker 1: prick with pins, and bite them, also causing them to
Speaker 1: thrash and writhe about. And the number of afflicted girls
Speaker 1: in a few days increased, as did the number of accusations,
Speaker 1: until I saw somewhere there were over one hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty witches accused. Yeah, that's seventy eight percent of them
Speaker 1: were women, by the way, Oh.
Speaker 2: Shocking, uh huh.
Speaker 1: And then trials went about as you would expect. If
Speaker 1: you confess, you were pretty much fined and released or
Speaker 1: let off with light punishment. But if you maintained your
Speaker 1: innocent your innocence, you were executed.
Speaker 2: That's so interesting to me. If you're like, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: I did it, I'm a witch, they're like, all right,
Speaker 2: stop doing it. And if you're like, no, really, I'm
Speaker 2: not a witch, they're like, we're gonna burn you at
Speaker 2: the steak. That's really I did not know that until
Speaker 2: reading this.
Speaker 1: It's really strange. Also, no one was burned at the stake.
Speaker 1: Nineteen people were hanged. One person was pressed to death,
Speaker 1: like crushed.
Speaker 2: Okay, that's horrible, yeap, and means had died in jail
Speaker 2: I while awaiting trial. So how come you think of
Speaker 2: witches being burned at the stake.
Speaker 1: Probably because they were in like Europe and other places.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, also in the US, but who knows. Okay,
Speaker 1: So that's that's the very short version. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of you know, really fun reading out there, really interesting
Speaker 1: reading out there where you could get a lot more information. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: But where does ergotism come into play? Yeah, So in
Speaker 1: this nineteen seventy six paper by Linda Caporeal there was
Speaker 1: it was published in Science. She proposed that orgatism was
Speaker 1: the reason for the symptoms of the afflicted girls. So
Speaker 1: the twitching, the choking sensation, the pinprick feeling, hallucinations and
Speaker 1: these all kind of fit in fairly nicely with how
Speaker 1: ergotism acts on someone. They do. And then there's the
Speaker 1: fact that ergotism had been known in Europe for hundreds
Speaker 1: of years, but there was no evidence that it was
Speaker 1: known to occur in North America at this time. Wasn't
Speaker 1: until the early eighteen hundreds that it was referred to
Speaker 1: in writing, so it could have been just not written about,
Speaker 1: but known whatever. And there's then she also points out
Speaker 1: in this paper the climate conditions so like really good
Speaker 1: for fungal growth, warm, damp summers. Yeah, ever, spatial pattern
Speaker 1: kind of fits. I don't kind convinced by that in
Speaker 1: terms of like which which households were affected? Hm, okay.
Speaker 1: And then there's the abrupt ending of the whole event,
Speaker 1: like it was just sort of one day, it was
Speaker 1: just like and then it's over, no more afflictions. So
Speaker 1: what do you think? Are you convinced? Did you read
Speaker 1: the reply to the nineteen seventy six paper.
Speaker 2: Oh no, I didn't see that there was a reply.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I'll tell you about it, okay.
Speaker 2: I I mean I was absolutely not a thousand percent convinced.
Speaker 2: I don't think that I would ever be convinced about
Speaker 2: something that is so difficult to try and actually pinpoint. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but it was a very it was a very interesting idea,
Speaker 2: and I like the idea that someone is trying to
Speaker 2: put an explanation. I got to be honest, I didn't
Speaker 2: know that during the sale and which trials it started with,
Speaker 2: like girls who had these symptoms that then accused other
Speaker 2: people of being witches that did those symptoms to them, right,
Speaker 2: That I didn't realize that aspect of the story. And
Speaker 2: so I think thinking about those initial cases being cases
Speaker 2: of ergotism. Yeah, Okay, maybe maybe maybe, But you know,
Speaker 2: it's a little weird that like nobody else then would
Speaker 2: have had symptoms if it was a really bad year
Speaker 2: for ergot then how come like there wasn't more like
Speaker 2: any men who had symptoms or other people in those
Speaker 2: same households that had symptoms, if it was a geographical thing.
Speaker 2: So it's kind of like, Okay, it's fun toie.
Speaker 1: It's a fun hypothesis. Yeah, And so I read this
Speaker 1: reply to this paper, which was like, here's a pro side.
Speaker 1: Here is a negating every single point that the nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy six paper made. Okay, And so the two authors
Speaker 1: Spanos and got talked about how they talked about the
Speaker 1: gangreness and the convulsive form, and then they talked about
Speaker 1: the hypothesis that vitamin A deficiency usually needs to or
Speaker 1: usually is present when there's when the convulsive form appears,
Speaker 1: and Salem was not likely to be a place where
Speaker 1: vitamin A deficiency happened, so there was ample fish and cows.
Speaker 1: There was also no mention of any gang green during
Speaker 1: this time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the.
Speaker 1: Age structure of those who were afflicted doesn't match either,
Speaker 1: So convulsive ergotism happens mainly in young children apparently, but
Speaker 1: only three of the eleven afflicted girls were under fifteen
Speaker 1: years old, and I think one was under ten. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you would expect, like you said, more small children
Speaker 1: or more people to have or.
Speaker 2: Even more of like people who work with rise so
Speaker 2: like bakers, things like that, people who are like being
Speaker 2: more exposed like constantly too. I would kind of think
Speaker 2: maybe that those people would have had some kind of
Speaker 2: symptoms as well, right.
Speaker 1: And then, like you know, the nineteen seventy six paper
Speaker 1: makes this point about or tries to make the spatial
Speaker 1: argument that like, oh, in this household, in this household,
Speaker 1: but really it wasn't a household wide affliction. Yeah it was.
Speaker 2: It was just like girls in those particular houses, right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: A couple other people who then have refuted this reply
Speaker 1: or whatever, have said, oh, people have different susceptibilities to ergotism. True,
Speaker 1: different strains of the fungus might be like play a
Speaker 1: role here. And so I mean I think overall, like
Speaker 1: what it seems is that it's like, just like you said,
Speaker 1: it's a fun hypothesis, but it's probably not that well supported. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but that's how I would feel about it. I
Speaker 2: would say that ergotism is a better fit for the
Speaker 2: Salem Witch Trials than it is for dancing plague.
Speaker 1: Oh, for sure.
Speaker 2: To get back on that track.
Speaker 1: Also, so real quick though back on Salem. I saw
Speaker 1: one of the hypotheses somewhere for the Salem Witch Trials
Speaker 1: was or for these afflictions, was encephalized lethargic got trans
Speaker 1: carried by birds? What?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: And there was no like citation at the end of
Speaker 1: this for me to like read more about it. But like, what.
Speaker 2: Encephalis lethargic got carried by birds? Makes no sense?
Speaker 1: No, but that was not there. They weren't saying this
Speaker 1: is what I proposed. They were saying, this is one
Speaker 1: of the hypotheses that is.
Speaker 2: Really weird, isn't it. Yep. Well, so let's get back
Speaker 2: on the track of dancing plague. That was a fun
Speaker 2: little aside.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there was a lot of little aside.
Speaker 2: It was, but it was good. Now we don't have
Speaker 2: to do a whole episode on the Sandwich Child, so
Speaker 2: dancing play ergotism, m M. Which what's funny is because
Speaker 2: again I knew nothing about dancing plague before this, and
Speaker 2: I so when I was researching this I was like, yeah,
Speaker 2: maybe it was zurgotism. You can have a lot of spath,
Speaker 2: but I had no idea that dancing bike was like
Speaker 2: literally people dancing on a town hall stage until they dropped.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 2: So yeah no, no, definitely not. Okay, we should take
Speaker 2: a quick break, I think, before our last hypothesis. So
Speaker 2: the last hypothesis we've already mentioned is, of course, in
Speaker 2: air quotes, mass hysteria.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what's a better term for this, because that's what
Speaker 1: I saw a lot of the places.
Speaker 2: Mass psychogenic illness is one of them. Also, let me
Speaker 2: find the exact terminology for it, outbreaks of multiple unexplained symptoms.
Speaker 1: That's a mouthful. Okay, it's a.
Speaker 2: Very broad term. Yeah, so let's let's start right there. Actually,
Speaker 2: the term mass hysteria is a terrible, terrible term. It's
Speaker 2: simultaneously very like othering anything. When you refer to something
Speaker 2: as mass blah blah blah illness, like it's very like, oh,
Speaker 2: those those people, the masses, you know, which is problematic
Speaker 2: in a lot of ways. But the word hysteria hysteria
Speaker 2: has roots. This is a thing We'll do a whole
Speaker 2: episode on some for sure. So if you are unaware.
Speaker 2: The term hysteria comes from a Greek term that meant womb,
Speaker 2: like the root h y s t er histor is
Speaker 2: from a Greek term for womb, which is why we
Speaker 2: still call it uterine removal surgery a hysterectomy to me, So,
Speaker 2: hysteria used to be thought to be something that only
Speaker 2: happened to people with uteruses, and it was the result
Speaker 2: of a wandering.
Speaker 1: Uterus, the wandering uterus? Can that be our like band name?
Speaker 2: Yes, one hundred percent? Is there not already a band
Speaker 2: called the Watering the Wandering Uteri?
Speaker 1: There's got to be Oh yeah.
Speaker 2: So for a very long time, this was used as
Speaker 2: an excuse to brush off and explain away any potential pain, issues, emotions,
Speaker 2: anything that a person with a womb might have. It's like, oh,
Speaker 2: they've got hysteria, they must be hysterical. So yeah, that
Speaker 2: is a terrible term.
Speaker 1: Well, maybe Frau Trafea just had a dancing uterus.
Speaker 2: Maybe she had a dancing uterus she just couldn't contain herself.
Speaker 2: So yeah, what's what's also really interesting is that so
Speaker 2: you know, when I was trying to research this, I
Speaker 2: was googling on Google scholar mass hysteria, of course, because
Speaker 2: that's what it was called. And it's really infuriating how
Speaker 2: many relatively recent papers still exist using that terminology. But
Speaker 2: if you want to find more information about it, the
Speaker 2: most common term I found was mass psychogenic illness or
Speaker 2: mass psychogenic response. It's still kind of not a great term,
Speaker 2: quite honestly, right, it's not perfect. It still is using
Speaker 2: that these masses of people, and in general, we don't
Speaker 2: know very much about psychogenic illnesses. So a psychogenic illness
Speaker 2: is a term that's used to mean any number of
Speaker 2: either what's called somatiform or dissociative disorders, So either disorders
Speaker 2: where you have it's thought that you have psychiatric stressors
Speaker 2: of some kind that cause actual somatic or bodily symptoms.
Speaker 2: That's a somatophor disorder, and then dissociative disorders, which are
Speaker 2: disorders where again psychiatric stressors cause a change in consciousness
Speaker 2: or identity of some kind, so like a fugue state.
Speaker 2: That's a that's an associative disorder. So that's kind of
Speaker 2: what that term a psychogenic illness means.
Speaker 1: So first of all, at.
Speaker 2: Some point people have tried to separate mass psychogenic illness
Speaker 2: into two types. You have mass like panic and then
Speaker 2: you have mass like motor disorders.
Speaker 1: Right yeah, okay.
Speaker 2: And they' and then other people have tried to be like, no,
Speaker 2: it's actually one and the same. So I don't know
Speaker 2: the consensus. If there's something I know less than biochem,
Speaker 2: it's psych quite honestly, So sorry in advance, I'm not
Speaker 2: sure where the consensus lies at this point, whether mass
Speaker 2: psychogenic illness is two separate like mass panic versus mass
Speaker 2: motor psychogenic illness. But in this case, either way, we're
Speaker 2: talking more about motor symptoms. Right, Yes, there was probably
Speaker 2: panic going on, but what we're really talking about is
Speaker 2: a bunch of people that are having physical symptoms, not
Speaker 2: uncontrolled dancing that they don't want to be doing. These
Speaker 2: are voluntary movements in that they are voluntary muscle groups moving,
Speaker 2: but they are involuntary movements in that the person does
Speaker 2: not want for them to happen and feels that they
Speaker 2: are not in control of them happening. So that is
Speaker 2: actually if that happens in an individual, it's often called
Speaker 2: a conversion disorder. So to talk about mass psychogenic illness
Speaker 2: in this instance, we actually have to also talk about
Speaker 2: conversion disorder.
Speaker 1: Yes, this is fascinating, it really is.
Speaker 2: And again I apologize that I'm probably not doing a
Speaker 2: super great job of it because psych is not my
Speaker 2: strong suit. But conversion disorder is unexplained. Bodily symptoms usually
Speaker 2: neurologic symptoms, but also I mean anxiety type symptoms have
Speaker 2: often like neurologic components as well, but they can also
Speaker 2: have things like vomiting diarrhea. A lot of times conversion
Speaker 2: disorder are neurologic things like muscle twitching, movements, facial twitches
Speaker 2: that are not associated with any underlying medically known disease.
Speaker 2: You do all kinds of like EEGs, which is looking
Speaker 2: at your brain waves. You do EKGs to look at
Speaker 2: your heart. You can do tests on your muscles to
Speaker 2: look at like nerve conduction, and you find that everything
Speaker 2: you can test for is normal, but this person still
Speaker 2: has like a twitch or a something that you absolutely
Speaker 2: cannot explain. That might be called a conversion disorder. Generally,
Speaker 2: you also have to have some kind of psychiatric stressor
Speaker 2: associated with it, So a lot of times it might
Speaker 2: be past traumas or things like that, some kind of
Speaker 2: outside stressor that might be causing this that is associated
Speaker 2: with this conversion disorder, not just like you know someone
Speaker 2: who has absolutely no no one has no stress in
Speaker 2: their life, but you know, right, Okay. So the thing
Speaker 2: about mass psychogenic illness is that there have been a
Speaker 2: lot of instances of it where things have been diagnosed
Speaker 2: and called mass psychogenic illness. A lot of times these
Speaker 2: happen in schools or in workplaces.
Speaker 1: Are you going to talk about the laughing epidemic?
Speaker 2: No, I wasn't going to actually talk about any epidemics. Oh,
Speaker 2: what's the laughing epidemic?
Speaker 1: Oh, it's a laughing plague. So in nineteen sixty two
Speaker 1: in Tanzania near Lake Tanganika, at a mission school, several
Speaker 1: girls started laughing uncontrollably, and then it was also interspersed
Speaker 1: with crying, and this became highly contagious, and soon ninety
Speaker 1: five of the one hundred and fifty nine students could
Speaker 1: not stop laughing. So they shut down the school because
Speaker 1: it was just like they could do anything. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: then this created more of a problems as everyone went home.
Speaker 1: The students went home and or they went to their hometowns,
Speaker 1: and then there they spread the laughter as well. So
Speaker 1: by the end of this epidemic, several hundred cases of
Speaker 1: uncontrolled laughter were reported over like a few months or something.
Speaker 2: Wow, that's fun.
Speaker 1: But there's also like other dancing plagues. Yeah, so I
Speaker 1: think that's that's really interested. There's also there have been
Speaker 1: cases also of contagious fainting. Maybe that was one of
Speaker 1: the ones that you talked about in schools as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a lot of it in schools is things like fainting,
Speaker 2: passing out. There was cases in the one one of
Speaker 2: those things that I did read about was actually very
Speaker 2: recently in Australia, following an HPV vaccination, there was a
Speaker 2: series of girls that all like got very nauseous dizzy,
Speaker 2: some of them fainted, some went to the hospital. Nothing
Speaker 2: was wrong with any of them, but every single one
Speaker 2: of those girls was trotted out through a central quad
Speaker 2: where everyone could see them as they got taken to
Speaker 2: the nurse's office. So this is a really important part
Speaker 2: of mass psychogenic illness, and it's why I was asking
Speaker 2: you how this first started after Frau Trofia began dancing.
Speaker 2: Because they tend to well, they do spread by sight
Speaker 2: and like visual and auditory type stimulation. So it's either
Speaker 2: people seeing directly something happened to someone, or hearing this
Speaker 2: is happening to everyone in this place, or in some
Speaker 2: cases smell as well.
Speaker 1: Smell. Do you have any instances of smell.
Speaker 2: There's been a lot of cases where someone, for example,
Speaker 2: in a school, a teacher came in and smelled gas.
Speaker 2: She said, I smell gas, and then she started getting nauseous, dizzy, lightheaded,
Speaker 2: and then throughout the whole school there was They've done
Speaker 2: tons of testing. They found absolutely nothing, no gas, no
Speaker 2: no toxins in the environment, no gas leaks of any kind.
Speaker 2: But a bunch of students in that school, including the teacher,
Speaker 2: they all like got dizzy, nauseous, there was vomiting everywhere,
Speaker 2: things like that.
Speaker 1: Interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it can often start with a single smell.
Speaker 2: So that's another thing about this idea of mass quote
Speaker 2: unquote hysteria or mass psychogenic illness. Is it tends to
Speaker 2: occur in women.
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 2: So, so one of the big issues with calling something
Speaker 2: mass psychogenic illness is that you really have to rule
Speaker 2: out that there's not anything else happening right right, Because
Speaker 2: any type of psychiatric disorder, especially a conversion disorder, you
Speaker 2: have to rule out. You can't just call it conversion
Speaker 2: disorder because you don't know as a physician what's going
Speaker 2: on with somebody. Right, just because you don't know doesn't
Speaker 2: mean there's not something going on. And very importantly, it
Speaker 2: doesn't make the symptoms any less real.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, and it doesn't make like, let's say, so you're
Speaker 1: saying that a lot of these conversion disorders and a
Speaker 1: lot of cases of conversion disorder, and a lot of
Speaker 1: instances of mass psychogenic illness happen when there's extreme trauma
Speaker 1: around a situation. And so that's why I spent a
Speaker 1: lot of time at the beginning talking about the years
Speaker 1: leading up to the fifteen eighteen outbreak, and why I
Speaker 1: talked a little bit about Salem and stuff like this,
Speaker 1: is that these you can't just discount, like you're like, oh, well, whatever,
Speaker 1: that mass hysteria was just caused because whatever, a bunch
Speaker 1: of people were crazy. They were crazy, yeah, right, And
Speaker 1: it's like, no, there was this extremely traumatic events. There's
Speaker 1: this extremely important cultural context and historical context that you
Speaker 1: have to consider when these are happening. And it's so
Speaker 1: it does seem very dismissive when it's just like, oh,
Speaker 1: mass psychogenic illness. Yeah, the othering of it is a
Speaker 1: very good point I think that you made.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it is very difficult. And then but at
Speaker 2: the same time, what's difficult too is when you have
Speaker 2: a situation where you know you don't want mass panic
Speaker 2: and if there isn't anything happening, like for example, in
Speaker 2: the case of the HPV vaccine, after that incident, there
Speaker 2: have been many many studies and before and since that
Speaker 2: incident to make sure that there really wasn't anything going
Speaker 2: on with that vaccine. Yeah, but you don't want people
Speaker 2: to then not vaccinate because they're worried about this side
Speaker 2: effect of vaccination that actually had nothing to do with
Speaker 2: the vaccine itself. It really was a psychogenic response. So
Speaker 2: the question too can like the other thing is in
Speaker 2: this first person who had it so in Frau Trophia,
Speaker 2: did she have something like a a medically diagnosable illness
Speaker 2: that caused her to be acting in this way that
Speaker 2: then became a psychogenic mass psychogenic response in the general population.
Speaker 2: And this is something we can see happening often in
Speaker 2: things like real like gas outbreaks or like neurotoxin exposures
Speaker 2: where you have maybe a release of some toxic gas
Speaker 2: in an area that really does have an effect on people,
Speaker 2: and then in surrounding areas kind of expanding from that,
Speaker 2: you can have it amplified by this mass psychogenic response.
Speaker 2: So then it's even harder to differentiate what people really need,
Speaker 2: this like medical care because they were exposed to something
Speaker 2: versus people who need medical care. But it's not going
Speaker 2: to be the same medical care because they weren't actually
Speaker 2: exposed to anything that are causing symptoms that they have. Right, right,
Speaker 2: it's really complicated.
Speaker 1: That is really complicated.
Speaker 2: So I want to talk about something that I found
Speaker 2: very cool about mass psychogenic response.
Speaker 1: Oh okay.
Speaker 2: That was trying to explain why the pathophysiology of why
Speaker 2: mass psychogenic response happens.
Speaker 1: Okay, Oh, this is this is so cool.
Speaker 2: This is a very human reason pathophysiologically, and I'm not
Speaker 2: saying this is the absolute reason, but this paper was
Speaker 2: very interesting. So this paper suggested that mirror neurons are
Speaker 2: involved in a mass psychogenic response. Oh okay, let's talk
Speaker 2: about mirror neurons. Have you heard of these? Mm hmm okay.
Speaker 2: So mirror neurons are these neurons in your brain that
Speaker 2: so in my brain when I see someone doing something,
Speaker 2: these mirror neurons in my brain activate the same region
Speaker 2: in my brain that's activated in your brain by whatever
Speaker 2: you're doing. Okay, So a concrete example of this, if you, Aaron,
Speaker 2: are scratching your nose, scratch your nose, scratch okay, right,
Speaker 2: a certain part of your brain, the nose scratch region,
Speaker 2: is activated while you scratch your nose. When I see
Speaker 2: you scratch your nose, the mirror neurons in my brain
Speaker 2: activate my nose scratch region.
Speaker 1: That's wild, I know, But like, does this happen like
Speaker 1: we're friends, we're friends, happen to strangers?
Speaker 2: Oh? Great question, as far as I know, absolutely, yeah, Okay.
Speaker 2: It suggested that this mirror neuron system is involved in
Speaker 2: a lot of our higher order functions, like imitation, which
Speaker 2: is something that's really important for learning and also for
Speaker 2: social behavior.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: Imitation is something that we do very naturally. A lot
Speaker 2: of times you don't even realize that you're doing it.
Speaker 2: But if you're with a group of people, like people
Speaker 2: start to sort of imitate unconsciously what other people in
Speaker 2: that group are doing. Yeah, but it's also very likely
Speaker 2: that there's inhibition on this system because we don't go
Speaker 2: around imitating absolutely everything that we see, right, that would
Speaker 2: be socially unacceptable and weird if you did that, right, Okay,
Speaker 2: So I want to go through some of this paper's
Speaker 2: hypotheses that they lay out in support of why mirror
Speaker 2: neurons might be involved in mass psychogenic illness. One of them,
Speaker 2: first of all, is that the features of mass psychogenic
Speaker 2: illness very commonly, Like I said already, they spread these
Speaker 2: symptoms by sight or by sound or oral communication. That
Speaker 2: is often that is the way that mirror neurons also function.
Speaker 2: Both visual and auditory stimulation have been implicated in mirror
Speaker 2: neurons stimulation.
Speaker 1: So if I said to you, I'm scratching my nose,
Speaker 1: we all are scratching our nose over here, then your
Speaker 1: nose neurons would scratch. Maybe.
Speaker 2: Gotta be honest, I don't know a lot about mirror neurons,
Speaker 2: really don't, okay. So, Also, in addition to motor imitation,
Speaker 2: which we know mirror neurons are involved in, so scratching
Speaker 2: your nose, et cetera, it's also suggested that mirror neurons
Speaker 2: play a role in emotional cognition, So the tendency to
Speaker 2: catch emotions of other people and be able to recognize
Speaker 2: emotions in other people.
Speaker 1: Is that empathy plus?
Speaker 2: Yeah, but mirror neurons might kind of like help us
Speaker 2: get empathy essentially, right, access empathy.
Speaker 1: That's very interesting.
Speaker 2: So it's possible that mass psychogenic response might be this
Speaker 2: kind of emotional emotional contagion where you're seeing this emotion
Speaker 2: of other people and that's causing that same type of
Speaker 2: response in you, especially in the case of something like panic,
Speaker 2: right If other people are panicking, you're more likely to panic, right.
Speaker 1: Well, And that's also like a that seems like it
Speaker 1: would be an evolutionarily favored response.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, although it's how I ended up in therapy, so
Speaker 2: other people's anxiety giving me anxiety anyways. Yeah, So overall,
Speaker 2: that's kind of like a very bare bones look at
Speaker 2: mass psychogenic illness. What do we think, Aaron Dan.
Speaker 1: I think mass psychogenic illness it's.
Speaker 2: The only thing that seems, from a medical perspective possible.
Speaker 2: I think what's really important to keep in mind whenever
Speaker 2: you're thinking about something like any psychogenic illness is that
Speaker 2: it doesn't make the symptoms any less real just because
Speaker 2: we can't identify what it is medically or somatically. That's
Speaker 2: causing that illness. Just because it's your maybe outside stressors
Speaker 2: that are manifesting in this bodily symptom, it doesn't make
Speaker 2: those symptoms any less real. And that's so so important.
Speaker 2: These people suffered and died in cases. Yeah, and it
Speaker 2: might just be you know, it's not something that we
Speaker 2: can explain with like a disease or an illness or
Speaker 2: a malnutrition or anything like that. But our brains are incredibly,
Speaker 2: incredibly powerful.
Speaker 1: It's amazing, it's incredible. Yeah. Yeah, so okay, Oh, this
Speaker 1: was so fun. Thereic, this was really fun. I had
Speaker 1: a really good time.
Speaker 2: Me too. More medical mysteries, let's tast we'll find another one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we'll come up with more, or send us more. Yeah.
Speaker 2: If you know of medical mysteries, we will add them
Speaker 2: to our list. Yes, awesome, Okay, now sources time sources,
Speaker 2: all right.
Speaker 1: I already mentioned the Dancing Plague book by John Waller.
Speaker 1: I also read a little bit of a book called
Speaker 1: Keeping Together in Time, which is about sort of like
Speaker 1: the anthropological history of Dance by William McNeil cool and
Speaker 1: then a few papers that nineteen seventy six Carporeal paper
Speaker 1: about ergotism, and then the reply by Spanos and Gottlieb
Speaker 1: a couple other papers about dancing plague, and I will
Speaker 1: post all of these on the website.
Speaker 2: I have a number of very cool articles about ergotism,
Speaker 2: several on mass psychogenic illness, and a few resources if
Speaker 2: you'd like to look more into Sindenham Korea. I'd like
Speaker 2: to give a special shout out to a paper by
Speaker 2: Lee on the history of ergot RAI from antiquity to
Speaker 2: nineteen hundred and another more recent one by Belser Erlik
Speaker 2: about ergotism since nineteen hundred, and there are several other
Speaker 2: on ergotism. And then that paper on mass psychogenic illness
Speaker 2: and mirror neurons was by Lee at All in twenty ten.
Speaker 1: We will post all of these sources and a few
Speaker 1: more that we mentioned on our website where you can
Speaker 1: find them at this podcast will Kill You dot com.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much to Bloodmobile for providing the music
Speaker 2: for this episode and.
Speaker 3: All of our episode, And thank you to you listeners
Speaker 3: for listening to our podcast and allowing us to make
Speaker 3: this because it's really fun and we really enjoy doing it.
Speaker 2: I hope you had fun with this episode. It was
Speaker 2: so fun for us.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, well, until next time, wash your hands
Speaker 2: You filthy animals.