Wednesday Weird: Sleeping Sickness

Today is the last of our Halloween themed Wednesday Weirds. Today, we're talking about the Sleeping Sickness.

So let's say your SO comes down with what you assume is a bad cold. But after getting worse over the next few days, they suddenly freeze like a statue. They lie there, motionless, in a hospital bed. Then, finally, they wake up. Which would be a cause of celebration!

But, it gets worse.

They start to act completely different -- they're emotionless and distant, which makes you think of this delightful film:

THEN! (because so far, it's just not bad enough) they start gouging at their eyes and/or violently, sexually assaulting people.

 

That, right there, folks, is a real disease that first cropped up in the early 20th century. It's called encephalitis lethargica, or the sleeping sickness, and it struck as an epidemic just after the Spanish flu died down.

And, nobody has any idea where it came from or where it went.

It begins with a sore throat right before it escalates into hallucinations and madness before the body ultimately locks up. While sufferers appeared to be asleep, they were actually fully conscious but unable to move. Many died during this stage.

 

Survivors of the sleeping disease suffered behavioral problems for the rest of their lives, becoming excessively violent and -- regardless of gender -- kind of rapey. They also became emotionally indifferent, unable to recognize, for example, the beauty of art. They became completely different people.

Ten years after the epidemic, new cases suddenly stopped appearing.

Today, doctors still don't know what the deal was, though clearly it had to do with the brain. But whether it was a bacteria, or a virus, no one really knows.

 

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Currently, it still occasionally shows up. So while the world is worried about Ebola, sometimes there are even scarier things that can strike when you least expect it.

Wednesday Weird: The Dancing Plague

Aww! A dancing plague, you say? That sounds kewt!

Wrong.

It is not cute and leads to death.

The Dancing Plague was an actual disease in France in the early 16th century. One day, Frau Troffea started dancing in the streets in Strasbourg, France. 6 days later some people joined her. After a week there were 34 people dancing. After a month this number had climbed to 400.

That's 400 people dancing in the street.

Aww! It sounds like a fun party!

Wrong again.

By that point the dancers started to die from starvation, exhaustion and strokes. You know. From dancing.

If a lot of this sounds ridiculous, prepare to scoff even louder when you hear what the solution was. (Keep in mind, this was in the early 1500s. Medical science just wasn't, back then)

Strasbourg officials thought the best way to handle this situation was to encourage the dancers to dance even more. They rounded them all up, put them in a building, and hired musicians to play music for them, like some sort of ass-backwards homeopathy.

The results from this treatment? More death.

Then, one day, the Dancing Plague just stopped. It never happened again, and despite it no longer being the 16th century and medical science existing now, there still is no solution or answer to why 400 people danced themselves to death.

Two of the biggest theories are Mass Psychogenic Illness (MPI) and ergotism (ergot poisoning)(which is poisoning by a certain fungus and causes convulsions (it may also be the culprit for the Salem witchcraft accusations)) but both of these theories have big problems.

For ergotism, one of the common side-effects is a loss of muscular control, which makes complex muscle movements pretty much impossible.

As for MPI, it would require 400 people to, more or less, develop the same mass hysteria at a staggered pace, which is really unlikely.

So, there you have it. The Dancing Plague. Any thoughts are theories?