The Dancing Mania, an epidemic of the Middle Ages is a historical-pathological investigative book originally written and published in German by Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker (1795–1850) in 1832 as Die Tanzwuth, eine Volkskrankheit im Mittelalter: nach den Quellen für Aerzte und gebildete Nichtärzte bearbeitet.

[2] Key sources from 1518 used by Hecker in The Dancing Mania identify the diagnosis of 'hot blood' given to the afflicted, as well as the common belief at the time that the plague was caused by demonic possession.

[2] Prior to the publication of The Dancing Mania, such sources had never been combined into one piece of literature, making Hecker's book the first on the topic.

Hecker suggests that the Northern European outbreaks occurred as a result of religion and religious events, oppression, natural disasters, civic unrest, and feuds.

In this chapter, Hecker provides the eye-witness account of Nathaniel Pearce, who resided in Abyssinia from 1810 to 1819 and described the dancing mania (here, named Tigretier) in the streets of Tigre.

After his book on the dancing mania, Hecker's research on historical epidemics continued, such as the sweating sickness, the Black Death and infant mortality throughout history.

[1] His academic work, such as this book, earned him the title of professor ordinarius in history of medicine, which he held until his death in 1850.

[12] Following Hecker's death, The Dancing Mania and other work on the epidemics of the Middle Ages were expanded upon by Hirsch (original German title: Die großen Volkskrankheiten des Mittelalters.

[1] In 1888, Benjamin G. Babington translated and combined two of Hecker's most successful works into The Black Death & The Dancing Mania (published in English).

One such article was published in The British Medical Journal in 1859 in which the unnamed author uses Hecker's work to emphasise the need to view epidemics of mental diseases without the ignorance that comes along with religion.

[3] Like Hecker, the author argues that in cases of mass hysteria (such as during the dancing plague), religion worsens the outbreak.

[14] Following the publication of Hecker's book and due to the fact that Hecker was the first to publish a theory that mass hysteria was the cause of the dancing plague, research on mass psychogenic illnesses increased and was linked back to Sydenham's chorea, a disease characterised by uncontrolled jerking movements and previously theorised to be the cause of the dancing plague.

Hecker's theory on the role of mass hysteria, religious festivals and the accumulation of multiple time- and place-specific circumstances remains one of the key explanations of why the dancing plague occurred.