Andrew Davidson, a Scottish physician of the time, in a research paper in 1867 suggested that the disease, a psychological one, was associated with religious superstitions and rigid cultural imagination of the time.
Strasbourg was driven by beliefs like in the power of a saint to curse by dancing. The condition was aggravated as people were morally and mentally distressed then, owing to periods of dramatic economic decline and social conflict induced by great calamities such as the black-death, political and religious conditions of the people, and unwarranted resistance of authority.
There is, however, no current evidence to suggest that mass psychogenic illnesses have reduced. The form may have changed but they continue to exist. Most recently in 2019, there was a report of schoolgirls in Malaysia who had started screaming with some claiming to have seen the face of pure evil.
Courtesy: The Indian Express, September 19, 2020