The Black Death And The Dancing Mania

Author : J. F. C. Hecker
Publisher : CreateSpace
ISBN 13 : 9781480299719
Total Pages : 160 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (997 download)

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Download or read book The Black Death and the Dancing Mania written by J. F. C. Hecker and published by CreateSpace. This book was released on 2012-11-13 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Black Death and The Dancing Mania.The Black Death was one of the most devastating pandemics in human history, peaking in Europe between 1348 and 1350. The aftermath of the plague created a series of religious, social and economic upheavals which had profound effects on the course of European history. It took 150 years for Europe's population to recover. The plague reoccurred occasionally in Europe until the 19th century.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. Many other such treatises followed, among them, in 1865, a treatise on the “Great Epidemics of the Middle Ages.” Besides his “History of Medicine,” which, in its second volume, reached into the fourteenth century, and all his smaller treatises, Hecker wrote a large number of articles in Encyclopædias and Medical Journals. Professor J.F.K. Hecker was, in a more interesting way, as busy as Professor A.F. Hecker, his father, had been. He transmitted the family energies to an only son, Karl von Hecker, born in 1827, who distinguished himself greatly as a Professor of Midwifery, and died in 1882.Dancing mania (also known as dancing plague, choreomania, St John's Dance and, historically, St. Vitus' Dance) was a social phenomenon that occurred primarily in mainland Europe between the 14th and 17th centuries. It involved groups of people, sometimes thousands at a time. The mania affected men, women, and children, who danced until they collapsed from exhaustion. One of the first major outbreaks was in Aachen, Germany, in 1374, and it quickly spread throughout Europe; one particularly notable outbreak occurred in Strasbourg in 1518.Affecting thousands of people across several centuries, dancing mania was not a one-off event, and was well documented in contemporary reports. It was nevertheless poorly understood, and remedies were based on guesswork. Generally, musicians accompanied dancers, to help ward off the mania, but this tactic sometimes backfired by encouraging more to join in. There is no consensus among modern-day scholars as to the cause of dancing mania.The several theories proposed range from religious cults being behind the processions to people dancing to relieve themselves of stress and put the poverty of the period out of their minds. It is, however, understood as a mass psychogenic illness in which the occurrence of similar physical symptoms, with no known physical cause, affect a large group of people as a form of social influence.