The Black Death and the Dancing Mania

Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker was a German physician and medical writer, whose works appear in medical encyclopaedias and journals of the time. He particularly studied disease in relation to human history, including plague, smallpox, infant mortality, dancing mania and the sweating sickness, and is often said to have founded the study of the history of disease.The account of "The Black Death" here translated by Dr. Babington was Hecker's first important work of this kind. It was published in 1832, and was followed in the same year by his account of "The Dancing Mania." The books here given are the two that first gave Hecker a wide reputation.

In the time between the 14th and 17th centuries, the mainland of Europe suffered numerous disasters, including those of biological origin. One of the most mysterious of those phenomena was dancing mania, also called the dancing plague. It involved groups of people dancing erratically until they collapsed from exhaustion and injuries. People often danced in significant numbers, sometimes including thousands of participants. The well-documented phenomenon doesn't have a clear explanation up to date. The 19th-century German physician Justus Hecker provided research on dancing mania and connected the phenomenon to the plague.

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