I appreciate that the medical profession felt obligated to diagnose and classify social trends as ailments. This strange article describes the new epidemic of the "tango-foot" dance and quotes from a medical study on the topic:
"So far as the present dancing mania has been transmitted from individual to individual, and is continually spreading, we are justified in designating it as a psychic epidemic."The doctor then goes on to describe the sore foot many dancers of the tango-foot experience. He then warns of historic epidemics of dancers being trampled or kicked to death. The explanation of the break-out in the dancing "mania" is of course described in Freudian terms:
"Puritan prudery and Anglo-Saxon hypocrisy have for centuries acted the part of the ostrich and refused to acknowledge the existence of the sexual impulse."However, we must give it up to the doctor for having a liberal outlook on the new dancing trend. He views the new dances as beneficial to society, even a treatment for social anxiety disorder.
If the Pfizers and Astrazencas of today existed back then, prescriptions for Tango-Relief would have had a successful market. Well, as backwards as everything reads. There's an underlying ring of truth in the ol' doctor's perspective. Dancing does the body and soul good.
"I know of two timid and shut-in persons who were completely changed by the new dances. They no longer fear to meet persons of the opposite sex and are thinking seriously of matrimony."
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1 comment:
Wasn't this the basis for Footloose?
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