Mass Hysteria: The Dancing Plague | Sci Guys Podcast #76

Our Patrons chose Mass Hysteria as the episode topic this week, so we’re talking about The Dancing Plague! In 1518 a French town was overcome with a contagious conclusion to dance til they dropped...
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REFERENCES
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...
www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/his...
www.health.harvard.edu/newsle...
www.health.harvard.edu/mental...
www.britannica.com/science/ps...
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...
www.history.com/news/what-was...
www.britannica.com/event/danc...
journals.lww.com/epidem/FullT...

[@AimeeColeman]

Fun story: I was on a long-haul 7-hour flight from UAE to Thailand, and we were circling the runway when the wing of the plane in front of us in the line to land hit the ground and burst into flames when the plane came down at an angle (there were poor weather conditions, but you could see the fire from our plane) and we had to make an emergency diversion to a different Thai airport. When this happened, there was a protocol to stop people going into panic and mass hysteria in the confined cabin, and staff started handing out pots of instant rice noodles to passengers to distract them and keep them calm and keep their blood sugar stable. They also got some nervous looking passengers to help hand out the noodles to people so they had something more productive to do. It was a very strange and electric experience, but I wouldn't recommend it.

[@RexxyRobin]

Sooo no setting myself on fire, no dancing, no drinking and no spreading of psychic viruses? What is this tyranny?

[@mollieconstant6346]

My mom told me she had a friend who truly thought she was pregnant, and started showing symptoms of pregnancy, including her stomach bloating causing her to "see a baby bump", went to the hospital to have a test, and it came back negative.

[@kittyinacloud8101]

They did an episode about fake pregnancies

[@stormagedon3852]

If anyone here wants to know more about the dancing plague in particular please please watch the puppet history episode on it its really entertaining

[@WydraGames]

When I was a kid, I had such a bad motion sickness, I would start sneezing and feeling sick the moment I opened door to any car, or smell any wunderbaum in like a store. Nocebo shucks

[@blackmarya]

I have a similar reaction! Got 'car sick' a lot as a child too, family would always take a bag of butter mints on long car journeys so I get symptoms when I smell butter mints now. It sucks

[@storytellingsnek5255]

Did a little digging. Hysterectomies have been around from about 50 to 120 C.E. There are sources saying that the ancient Greeks knew how to perform them. Possibly even the Egyptians too. There are records of vaginal hysterectomies (laparoscopy is what we call it now I think?) being performed in the middle ages bc a physician noticed that the rudimentary drainage tube they were using was causing sever infections and sepsis. He changed the practice by cauterising the cervical stump and reduced the mortality rate from 75% to 8%. Then in the 1800s people tried abdominal surgery but faced the same problems (infection, sepsis, death via shock or exhaustion) until chloroform became known as an early anaesthetic. If I recall correctly the first successful hysterectomy was done due to a cyst but it was a possible treatment for 'female hysteria' or as I like to call it Being A Women Fed Up With The Patriarchy Disease. Being A Women Disease for short. With the advent of antibiotics, antiseptic, and anaesthetics more patients survived. Hysterectomy seemed to be more for physical issues (cysts, cancer, excessive periods, hecking liquid retention in the middle ages) rather than mental health. But it was a possibility. I think it was the idea of the uterus being the 'cause' of hysteria and hysterectomy being the removal of the uterus which leads to them having such close names. Women diagnosed with hysteria in the 1800s where usually left to die in asylums. But a doctor who researched the 'illness' ended up letting a bunch of female hysteria patients leave bc they found other treatments to help with it... Which led to the invention of the vibrator.. Though that is now disputed (adult funtime toys being invented bc manual treatment for hysteria was taxing not the liberation of these women from asylums) Needles to say this was a rabbit hole I did not see myself going down at 5am on a sleepless night.

[@tristanholderness4223]

placebo and nocebo are indeed both from Latin, but they're the future tense forms - "I will please"/"I will harm" rather than the present tense (which would be placeo/noceo instead)

[@jessicadicesare6797]

Thank you very much for this fantastic episode! I recently became a patron (@notcorrey good guess but my name is pronounced differently, I'm Italian, it's a bit difficult.. ). We also have some episodes of "mass hysteria" in Italy and that's where the word tarantula in this regard comes from: people in some regions of the South of Italy started to dance uncontrollably and it was believed they had been bitten by spiders (tarantulas) whose poison caused them to move as if they had spasms. Hence the dance tarantella in Naples and pizzica (from the Italian pizzicare=sting) in Apulia. The tarantallegra spell in Harry Potter comes from that, taranta=tarantula/spider and allegra=joyful like people who are dancing... What an association of ideas! Keep going with the podcast, you are great! 🤩

[@daemeecampbell2614]

Sound's like someone cast Otto's Irresistible Dance on those 400 people

[@deafdude9456]

What an amazing episode!! I was so excited to watch along, because it was my suggestion that won on my first month of being a patron, and now it is an entire episode! Keep up the great work guys, it is lovely to have something to listen to while I relax at the same time as learning something wildly interesting. Can't wait for the next episode, and I can definitely see myself being a patron for a long time :)

[@vennisemae7049]

21:15 so the absence of an illness,,, is an illness??? 37:26 i used to have really bad anxiety so when i had presentations or such in school i would come down with a literal fever! the mind does crazy things especially when you give it the fuel to do so!! really great episode guys! i knew about this "plague" prior to listening to this from a more historical standpoint but i loved to hear the psychological aspects of it! keep doing great stuff and helping me learn even when i'm procrastinating :)

[@ktb3171]

Mass Hysteria reminds me of the power of a placebo

[@solortolani1459]

I prepared dried chickpeas to eat like popcorn and turned on the TV to see u, everything was awesome untill my parents come home and Couse they don't speak English (we are from Argentina) appears that they don't realise that I can't hear and understand if they talk out loud. At the moment I started to use my phone to see the video my head starts hurting, psicosomatics it's that u? Now I'm eating my chickpea and seeing u in my phone while i do crochet, still great couse the show it's great, thanks!

[@TheEmperor124]

36:16 ish...I move slower when I'm feeling bad on purpose because any sort of stimulation will cause me to break down. I think to myself, I need to get this done but I can't do it, if I try to grind and push myself to get it done anyways I'll get overwhelmed and freak out. If I move super slowly, and remove myself from the situation and accept that I'm not going to get it done today,, I start to feel better.

[@youtuber_boi7672]

I'm excited to watch another eposide

[@felikso]

25:00 with the brain anticipating something and acting as if it's true - I experience this sO often with startles !! like. when I shut a gate or something. I'll often startle Twice: once, in anticipation of the noise, and then once Again after the noise has happened

[@darcylahey3178]

so that's why I don't have any side effects from my ADHD medication but have one of the side effects of my testosterone blockers. I was too young to understand that there were possible side effects of the ADHD medication but when I started the testosterone blockers and multiple people told me I might experience orthostatic hypotension.

[@oivenmann9977]

I absolutely loved this episode, it is an amazing topic and it was very interesting! This podcast deserves more attention

[@sazgarameen5724]

I love thiss episode so much

[@catT5236]

Would be very interested to know what the Sci Guys think if the P.A.C.E study

[@NightOwl_30]

Ah yeah. In my language (Romance language), something that is "nocivo" to your health is bad.

[@literal-tree]

if woman no crazy, then why she want read?

[@thomasjensen9976]

Dear liberals, if woman no crazy, then why she want read.

[@literal-tree]

dear @@thomasjensen9976, if you no crazy, then why you repeat me?

[@stephanie5293]

Im disappointed to see there was no Jimmy in the chat

[@5210smile]

Mirror neurons

[@jmains]

A little disappointing that the topic didn’t start until over an hour in.