Dancing Plagues and Mass Hysteria

I have never heard of this bizarre and eerie occurrence before. At first glance, "The Dancing Plague" seems to share a resemblance with the trance-like convulsions made popular by certain religious sects. But accounts suggest such episodes of mass hysteria might be able to become widespread and even more malignant.

"In July of 1518, a woman referred to as Frau Troffea stepped into a narrow street in Strasbourg, France and began a fervent dancing vigil that lasted between four and six days. By the end of the week, 34 others had joined her and, within a month, the crowd of dancing, hopping and leaping individuals had swelled to 400.

Authorities prescribed "more dancing" to cure the tormented movers but, by summer's end, dozens in the Alsatian city had died of heart attacks, strokes and sheer exhaustion due to nonstop dancing."

It's as funny as it is frightening. But it gets worse.

At least seven other outbreaks of the dancing epidemic occurred in medieval Europe, mostly in the areas surrounding Strasbourg. In more recent history, a major outbreak occurred in Madagascar in the 1840's, according to medical reports that described "people dancing wildly, in a state of trance, convinced that they were possessed by spirits."

Perhaps the most unusual documented case of mass psychogenic illness was the Tanganyika Laughter Epidemic of 1962. A paper published the following year in the Central African Journal of Medicine described what happened.

Triggered by a joke among students at a Tanzania boarding school, young girls began to laugh uncontrollably. At first there were spurts of laughter, which extended to hours and then days.

The victims, virtually all female, suffered pain, fainting, respiratory problems, rashes and crying attacks, all related to the hysterical laughter. Proving the old adage that laughter can be contagious, the epidemic spread to the parents of the students as well as to other schools and surrounding villages.

Eighteen months passed before the laughter epidemic ended.

Since at least 300 B.C., plagues of koro -- an irrational male fear that one's genitals have been stolen or are fatally shrinking into the body -- have swept through various parts of the world, particularly throughout Africa and Asia. Most recently, a 1967 outbreak, documented in the Singapore Medical Journal, caused over 1,000 men to use pegs and clamps in hopes of protecting themselves from the gripping fear.

Luckily, it seems researchers are finally arriving at a reasonable explanatory model for these strange outbreaks of mental illness.

Introducing . . . BANAPPLE!

I've been experimenting with Adobe Illustrator. It's kind of a bitch. Not at all intuitive. But the finished product looks decent.



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Nintendo E3 Conference Gets Inappropriate

Fix for My Blindness Not Far Off?

This technique, which involves lining a contact lens with a patient's own cultured stem cells, probably won't work for my condition, but it sounds like a step in the right direction.



gizmodo

New Derren Brown Interview

There are a couple interesting revelations in the new Times interview with famed mentalist Derren Brown (including the fact that he's gay!). But for obvious reasons, I found the following particularly intriguing:

He began to see his religious belief as self-delusion. “I used to go out and proselytise for Christianity; I’d go out with my set of arguments and lay them down, bam bam bam. And then when I was a hypnotist I began to see circular belief at work and began to think: ‘Well, that’s what I must be doing with my faith.’ I’m now annoyingly rational, rather annoyingly pedantic sometimes.”

I've long been fascinated by the fact that many famous magicians are also confirmed atheists, agnostics and rationalists. As experts in how to fool people, and how we fool ourselves, I think illusionists can bring a unique and valuable perspective to any analysis of religion.

Missing the Point

Along the lines of a friend's recent post, I've found that some of the songs I enjoyed as a kid lose much of their magic as I get older. I'm not simply talking about being over-played. I'm talking about songs that sound great, but the lyrics or performance or subject matter are so inane, they just ruin the experience.

For instance, I grew up on Conway Twitty's country-western rendition of the famous Irish ballad, "Danny Boy." There are a few varying interpretations of the song, but most would settle on either the story of a parent sending his son off to war or perhaps a dying father speaking to his only son. It's a somber, melancholic song to be sure and it is often played at funerals for this reason. Once I was old enough to appreciate the lyrics, however, I noticed a strange incongruity between the subject matter and the tone of Conway Twitty's version.

Be sure to listen past the 30 second mark for the full effect.