New York high school's Tourette's outbreak mirrors bizarre 'Dancing Plague' in France in 1518

By Michael Zennie

Last updated at 6:42 PM on 12th February 2012

The mysterious Tourette's-like epidemic that has afflicted 21 people, mostly teenage girls from a small high school in rural upstate New York, is strikingly similar to a deadly 'Dancing Plague' that affected 400 people in France nearly 500 years ago.

In July 1518, Frau Troffea went into the streets of Strasbourg, France, and started dancing and refused to stop for days on end.

Within a week some 34 people had joined her and within a month, the streets filled with 400 frantic dancers who claimed they could not stop moving. Some danced until they fell dead of exhaustion, stroke and heart attack.

Cases of 'mass hysteria,' or more formally 'mass psychotic illness,' throughout history could give doctors some clue as to the cause, and the cure, of the involuntary tics that have focused the world's attention on tiny Le Roy, New York.

Some parents and experts in the community are blaming contamination from a chemical spill. Others believe it's an outbreak of an acute psychiatric disorder caused by a bacterial infection.

FULL STORY: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2100129/Researchers-say-Le-...