{"id":308331,"date":"2025-11-21T09:28:49","date_gmt":"2025-11-21T09:28:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/american-history\/when-movie-fandom-became-a-medical-condition-nursing-clio\/"},"modified":"2025-11-21T09:28:49","modified_gmt":"2025-11-21T09:28:49","slug":"when-movie-fandom-became-a-medical-condition-nursing-clio","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=308331","title":{"rendered":"When Movie Fandom Became a Medical Condition \u2013 Nursing Clio"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<h3 class=\"blog-title\">\u201cFilmitis\u201d: When Movie Fandom Became a Medical Condition<\/h3>\n<div class=\"m-post-byline-with-avatar\" style=\"display:flex; align-items:center; flex-wrap:wrap; white-space:preserve\">\n<style><![CDATA[.m-post-avatars{ display: flex; margin-right: 10px; }.m-post-avatar{ border-radius: 100%; z-index: 1; }.m-post-avatar img { margin: 0 !important; border-radius: 100% }.m-post-avatar:not(:first-of-type){ margin-left: -7px }.m-post-avatar:nth-child(1){ z-index:1}]]><\/style>\n<div id=\"\" class=\"m-post-avatars\">\n<div class=\"m-post-avatar\" data-author-id=\"604\" data-author-type=\"user\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"36\" height=\"36\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nursingclio.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/T03NECAK3-U0808NA889E-407caa5a34c5-512.jpg?fit=36%2C36&amp;ssl=1\" class=\"attachment-36x36 size-36x36\" alt=\"\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nursingclio.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/T03NECAK3-U0808NA889E-407caa5a34c5-512.jpg?w=512&amp;ssl=1 512w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nursingclio.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/T03NECAK3-U0808NA889E-407caa5a34c5-512.jpg?resize=405%2C405&amp;ssl=1 405w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nursingclio.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/T03NECAK3-U0808NA889E-407caa5a34c5-512.jpg?resize=181%2C181&amp;ssl=1 181w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nursingclio.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/T03NECAK3-U0808NA889E-407caa5a34c5-512.jpg?resize=150%2C150&amp;ssl=1 150w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nursingclio.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/T03NECAK3-U0808NA889E-407caa5a34c5-512.jpg?resize=70%2C70&amp;ssl=1 70w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nursingclio.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/T03NECAK3-U0808NA889E-407caa5a34c5-512.jpg?resize=90%2C90&amp;ssl=1 90w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nursingclio.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/T03NECAK3-U0808NA889E-407caa5a34c5-512.jpg?resize=300%2C300&amp;ssl=1 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 36px) 100vw, 36px\"\/><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<hr\/>\n<p>In 1916, when Hollywood cinema first emerged, \u201cfilmitis\u201d debuted in US cultural debate as \u201cthe most modern of diseases, the last cry in pathology.\u201d Likened to an infection \u201cover which physicians and scientists have no control,\u201d filmitis described an excessive attachment to cinema, with fans becoming obsessed with a star or with becoming stars themselves. Articles also associated filmitis with female youth, identifying it as \u201ca disease which every girl has in the course of evolution, like croup or measles,\u201d and proposing solutions that could \u201ccure filmitis as the surgeon\u2019s knife leaves a festered spot clean and smooth,\u201d such as having girls confront \u201cthe small pay which falls to the beginner.\u201d<sup><sup><a id=\"post-35733-footnote-ref-0\" href=\"#post-35733-footnote-0\">[1]<\/a><\/sup><\/sup><\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_35734\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-35734\" style=\"width: 321px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-35734\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nursingclio.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/word-image-35733-1.jpeg?resize=321%2C356&amp;ssl=1\" alt=\"A fairy is warming her hands on the flame of a candle\" width=\"321\" height=\"356\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nursingclio.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/word-image-35733-1.jpeg?w=1075&amp;ssl=1 1075w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nursingclio.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/word-image-35733-1.jpeg?resize=366%2C405&amp;ssl=1 366w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nursingclio.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/word-image-35733-1.jpeg?resize=654%2C723&amp;ssl=1 654w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nursingclio.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/word-image-35733-1.jpeg?resize=768%2C849&amp;ssl=1 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 321px) 100vw, 321px\"\/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-35734\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Attribution: \u201cThe Girl Who Goes Movie Mad,\u201d <em>San Francisco Call<\/em>, March 28, 1920, 5. (Public domain.)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The discourse on \u201cfilmitis germs,\u201d \u201cmovie bacillus,\u201d and \u201cmovie madness\u201d pervading popular and scientific accounts of early US filmgoing reveals how medical knowledge has intersected with new media technology. It also sheds light on past women\u2019s embodied perceptions of health and illness. The conceptualization of passionate film reception as a health problem related to the recent invention of adolescence as a distinct life-stage between fourteen and twenty-four years of age. In 1904, US psychologist G. Stanley Hall published his magnum opus <em>Adolescence: its Psychology and its Relations to Physiology, Anthropology, Sociology, Sex, Crime, Religion and Education. <\/em>In it, Hall introduced the new developmental phase as one ruled by \u201cfloods of feeling\u201d that left \u201cbudding girls\u201d especially vulnerable to external influences, be they schoolmates or celebrities.<sup><sup><a id=\"post-35733-footnote-ref-1\" href=\"#post-35733-footnote-1\">[2]<\/a><\/sup><\/sup> Hall\u2019s work also participated in a Euro-American movement to reconceptualize children as psychologically distinct and emotionally valuable members of society. In the US, this movement included advocacy for child-protective labor laws and raising the age of consent for girls.<sup><sup><a id=\"post-35733-footnote-ref-2\" href=\"#post-35733-footnote-2\">[3]<\/a><\/sup><\/sup><\/p>\n<p>Hall\u2019s views on girlhood\u2019s extreme susceptibility to external influences built upon findings by the British sexologist Havelock Ellis. In 1901, Ellis had counseled parents, educators, and physicians to fear \u201cthe infatuation of young girls for actresses.\u201d He shared the story of a Philadelphian \u201cgirl of 19\u201d who \u201cacquired an absorbing infatuation for Miss Mary Garden,\u201d an opera star \u201cwith whom she had no personal acquaintance.\u201d The downward spiral from interested consumer to unwell fan manifested in a daily ritual of fantasy, where \u201cthe young girl would kneel before the star\u2019s portrait, and study hairdressing and manicuring in the hope of becoming Miss Garden\u2019s maid.\u201d Tinged with homoeroticism, the pathological attachment culminated in tragedy: \u201cwhen she realized that her dream was hopeless, [the unnamed fan] shot herself with a revolver.\u201d<sup><sup><a id=\"post-35733-footnote-ref-3\" href=\"#post-35733-footnote-3\">[4]<\/a><\/sup><\/sup><\/p>\n<p>This story was not unique. In the late nineteenth century, US newspapers published reports of \u201cstage-struck girls\u201d who likewise engaged in self-destructive behavior due to theatrical aspiration or attraction to stage stars. With the advent of Hollywood cinema, the first truly transmedial commercial enterprise, newspapers began casting \u201cthe stage-struck girl\u201d as the precursor to \u201cthe movie-mad girl,\u201d even declaring that \u201cthe stage-struck girl is dead; the movie-mad girl has replaced her.\u201d<sup><sup><a id=\"post-35733-footnote-ref-4\" href=\"#post-35733-footnote-4\">[5]<\/a><\/sup><\/sup><\/p>\n<p>Equally feminized, the discourse on movie madness became more potent than that of stage-struckness because of the democratic accessibility of cinema. While a theatrical performance necessitated a physical audience and star, cinema projected the image of an actor on thousands of screens to thousands of spectators at once. Cinema\u2019s admission prices were also typically cheaper than those for the stage, enabling more diverse audiences to attend.<\/p>\n<p>The speed with which the new Hollywood industry captivated the masses, however, alarmed clinicians. In 1916, physician John A. Hornsby told <em>The Lancet<\/em> that \u201cthe present movie craze\u201d was a national \u201chealth problem\u201d specifically affecting \u201cour children and young people.\u201d Luring youngsters with fantasy, \u201cthe \u2018movie craze\u2019 is doing more to destroy the home life of the American people [\u2026than] cocaine or morphine or whiskey.\u201d Disseminated as clinical fact, Hornsby\u2019s opinion that \u201cthe educational value of the movies is infinitesimal in comparison with its power for harm\u201d resembles later expert views cautioning that television, rock music, video games, or the internet are inherently addictive technologies, bound to have a detrimental effect on young people\u2019s health.<sup><sup><a id=\"post-35733-footnote-ref-5\" href=\"#post-35733-footnote-5\">[6]<\/a><\/sup><\/sup><\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_35737\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-35737\" style=\"width: 249px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-35737\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nursingclio.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/4327779921_81f422a1dd.jpg?resize=249%2C405&amp;ssl=1\" alt=\"A woman holds up sections of a dress pattern cut out of pink fabric\" width=\"249\" height=\"405\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nursingclio.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/4327779921_81f422a1dd.jpg?resize=249%2C405&amp;ssl=1 249w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nursingclio.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/4327779921_81f422a1dd.jpg?w=308&amp;ssl=1 308w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 249px) 100vw, 249px\"\/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-35737\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Woman\u2019s Home Companion cover, October 1929. (<a href=\"&quot;https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/21233184@N02\/4327779921\/\">Flickr<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The discourse on filmitis further exposes a commonplace familiarity with the nineteenth-century germ theory of disease transmission. From their commercial implementation in the 1890s, picture shows raised concerns regarding US public health. From poor ventilation to insufficient fire exits, the built infrastructure of movie theaters could contribute to the loss of human life and health. In 1918, the influenza pandemic rekindled collective awareness of the dangers of public amusements and airborne disease when US cinemas became sites of mass contagion. That same year, <em>Women\u2019s Home Companion<\/em> collapsed infectious outbreak and film fandom by exhorting movie impresarios to do \u201csomething to stop the epidemic\u201d and save \u201cthe millions of [\u2026] daughters going movie mad at an alarming rate.\u201d<sup><sup><a id=\"post-35733-footnote-ref-6\" href=\"#post-35733-footnote-6\">[7]<\/a><\/sup><\/sup><\/p>\n<p>Debates on high-risk disease transmission and localized outbreaks in the Progressive Era cannot be decoupled from the rise of eugenics, nativism, and white supremacy in US healthcare and social policy. Reported cases of filmitis, movie madness, and other analogous terms indicating dysfunctional fan attachment frequently featured blue-collar, poor, or immigrant female audiences. In 1909, pioneer social fieldworker Elizabeth Beardsley Butler described witnessing a \u201cpicture-show\u201d in New York City \u201cpacked thick\u201d with immigrant female workers so \u201cdetermined to be amused\u201d that they stood on the sidewalk for hours, \u201chot and tired and irritable,\u201d but doggedly waiting \u201cin line for their chance to get in.\u201d Butler argued that working girls\u2019 investment in cinema resembled the unstoppable force \u201cof any river fall that makes electricity or drives a mill.\u201d It was a question of time for such unhealthy attachment to spiral into dangerous behavior.<sup><sup><a id=\"post-35733-footnote-ref-7\" href=\"#post-35733-footnote-7\">[8]<\/a><\/sup><\/sup><\/p>\n<p>Sensationalistic headlines like \u201cThe Girl Who Goes Movie Mad\u201d further crystallized the \u201ctypical movie mad\u201d patient as a poor, undereducated, \u201cfoolish\u201d teenager who despised domestic work, like sixteen-year-old Tilly and \u201cher best \u2018pal,\u2019 Annie Heckscher.\u201d In this widely published newspaper article, a rural girl\u2019s fandom bled into the physical and public realms, disturbing both. After having acted out in the local picture house by dancing in the aisles, \u201cmovie mad\u201d Tilly ran away to Hollywood, loitering around \u201cthe city, angry [and] chagrined\u201d because she did not become a star. Suicide glimmered in the horizon when \u201ca motherly-faced woman in an aid society\u201d rescued the wayward girl \u201cjust in time.\u201d<sup><sup><a id=\"post-35733-footnote-ref-8\" href=\"#post-35733-footnote-8\">[9]<\/a><\/sup><\/sup><\/p>\n<p>As this cautionary tale shows, filmitis was part of an early twentieth-century network of moral panics policing young and mobile single women, which also included the \u201cwhite slavery\u201d sex trafficking and the \u201cgirl problem\u201d delinquency scares. The nosological delineation of filmitis as a communicable condition with a charitable pathogenesis (consumption, obsession, self-destruction) and a distinct patient pool (female, adolescent, unmarried, often underprivileged) reveals patriarchal anxieties triggered by an augmented female presence in the public sphere.<\/p>\n<p>The swell of single working women occupying city streets, mass transit, movie houses, offices, schools, factories, and stores in the Progressive Era introduced into public view ways of being and feeling that unsettled conservative ideals of female pleasure, autonomy, and wellbeing, feminist historians have documented.<sup><sup><a id=\"post-35733-footnote-ref-9\" href=\"#post-35733-footnote-9\">[10]<\/a><\/sup><\/sup> The work of Kathy Peiss and Nan Enstad, for example, contradicts Butler\u2019s dour views on working women\u2019s leisure by providing evidence that urban moviegoing offered young female workers empowering opportunities to socialize, date, and enjoy themselves outside work and societal strictures.<sup><sup><a id=\"post-35733-footnote-ref-10\" href=\"#post-35733-footnote-10\">[11]<\/a><\/sup><\/sup><\/p>\n<p>The alarmist discourse on movie-mad girlhood thus functioned as a mechanism of social control. It shamed and pathologized a female desire for different avenues of relationality and livelihood. The gendering of movie madness, as of filmitis, also reflected broader medico-juridical attempts to fix a definition of deviance, where disordered behavior became a diagnosable dysfunction stemming from sex, class, race, and ethnic differences. Periodical articles and clinical studies on movie madness deliberately highlighted specific names, occupations, and neighborhoods associated with foreign-born, nonwhite, or non-Christian working female populations. For instance, the surname of Tilly\u2019s accomplice, Annie Heckscher, conjured Jewish ancestry, while Butler\u2019s blue-collar women were described as alienated immigrants attracted to unhealthy built spaces: crowded factories, tenements, and movie theaters.<\/p>\n<p>However, as reporters and researchers pathologized female fan behavior, some girls embraced \u201cmovie-mad\u201d language. In audience letters published in movie magazines throughout the 1910s, ordinary young women endorsed the connection between female film fandom and vulnerability to infectious disease. In 1916, adolescent Ethel Hilton and her younger sister Alma, both from Melrose, Massachusetts, told <em>Motion Picture Magazine <\/em>that they suffered from \u201cBushmanite\u201d and \u201cWilburite\u201d respectively.<sup><sup><a id=\"post-35733-footnote-ref-11\" href=\"#post-35733-footnote-11\">[12]<\/a><\/sup><\/sup> The neologisms described worshipers of Francis X. Bushman and Crane Wilbur, heartthrobs of the silent screen.<\/p>\n<p>In 1917, Miss Grace Trotter from Dallas, Texas diagnosed herself with a similar acute affliction: \u201cWilburitis of the Cranium.\u201d According to Trotter, \u201cwomen and young girls are usually the victims of this disease, whose symptoms were caused by a bite from that well-known insect, the Movie Bug.\u201d If left untreated, \u201cthe patient [turned into] a full-fledged movie fan, subject to relapse if not careful. I know,\u201d the contributor concluded, \u201cbecause I\u2019m having a relapse now or I wouldn\u2019t have written this.\u201d<sup><sup><a id=\"post-35733-footnote-ref-12\" href=\"#post-35733-footnote-12\">[13]<\/a><\/sup><\/sup> Playful and shrewd, these self-reports demonstrate that the link between movie fandom, illness, and female audiences grew so ubiquitous that Hollywood female fans not only incorporated it in their slang, but used it to bolster their public performances of self.<\/p>\n<p>In fact, echoes of filmitis remain alive today. In social media platforms like Tumblr, media fans \u2013 many women- and LGBTQ+-identified \u2013 joyfully describe themselves as \u201cmentally ill people\u201d and microblogging as \u201cfree therapy for the hyperfixated mind.\u201d<sup><sup><a id=\"post-35733-footnote-ref-13\" href=\"#post-35733-footnote-13\">[14]<\/a><\/sup><\/sup> Like early movie-mad girls, these online fans reclaim pathological language for their amusement and to forge a sense of community.<\/p>\n<p>Historicizing the medicalization of film fandom ultimately shows that lived identification with clinical classifications of health and illness can be fluid. It also evinces that large-scale attempts to police female emotional attachment are not new, nor do they prioritize women\u2019s social power, intersectionality, or mind-body connection. That is left for fangirls to do.<\/p>\n<section id=\"sources\">\n<h4>Notes<\/h4>\n<ol>\n<li id=\"post-35733-footnote-0\">Anna Steese Richardson, \u201c\u2018Filmitis,\u2019 the Modern Malady: Its Symptoms and Its Cure,\u201d <em>McClure\u2019s Magazine<\/em> 56, no. 3 (January 1916): 12-13. <a href=\"#post-35733-footnote-ref-0\">\u2191<\/a><\/li>\n<li id=\"post-35733-footnote-1\">G. Stanley Hall, <em>Adolescence<\/em> (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1904), vi. Hall\u2019s theory of female adolescence built upon the work of various scientists, including Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, Harvard physician Edward H. Clarke, and German pedagogue Friedrich Fr\u00f6bel. <a href=\"#post-35733-footnote-ref-1\">\u2191<\/a><\/li>\n<li id=\"post-35733-footnote-2\">See Viviana A. Zelizer,<em> Pricing the Priceless Child: The Changing Social Value of Childre<\/em>n (Princeton University Press, 1994). <a href=\"#post-35733-footnote-ref-2\">\u2191<\/a><\/li>\n<li id=\"post-35733-footnote-3\">Havelock Ellis, <em>Studies in the<\/em> <em>Psychology of Sex: Sexual Inversion,<\/em> Vol. II [1901] (Philadelphia: F. A. Davis Company, 1922), 203. <a href=\"#post-35733-footnote-ref-3\">\u2191<\/a><\/li>\n<li id=\"post-35733-footnote-4\">\u201cSome Advice to Movie-Mad Girls,\u201d<em> The Barre Daily Times<\/em> (Vermont), November 18, 1916, 6. <a href=\"#post-35733-footnote-ref-4\">\u2191<\/a><\/li>\n<li id=\"post-35733-footnote-5\">John A. Hornsby, \u201cWe See a Health Problem in the Present \u2018Movie\u2019 Craze,\u201d <em>The Lancet-Clinic <\/em>(July 22, 1916): 81. <a href=\"#post-35733-footnote-ref-5\">\u2191<\/a><\/li>\n<li id=\"post-35733-footnote-6\">William A. Page, \u201cThe Movie-Struck Girl,\u201d <em>Woman\u2019s Home Companion<\/em> (June 1918): 18. <a href=\"#post-35733-footnote-ref-6\">\u2191<\/a><\/li>\n<li id=\"post-35733-footnote-7\">Elizabeth Beardsley Butler,<em> The Pittsburgh Survey 1907-1908: Women And The Trades <\/em>(New York: The Russell Sage Foundation, 1909), 324, 335. <a href=\"#post-35733-footnote-ref-7\">\u2191<\/a><\/li>\n<li id=\"post-35733-footnote-8\">Betty White, \u201cThe Girl Who Goes Movie Mad,\u201d <em>San Francisco Call<\/em>, March 28, 1920, 5. <a href=\"#post-35733-footnote-ref-8\">\u2191<\/a><\/li>\n<li id=\"post-35733-footnote-9\">See Joanne Meyerowitz, <em>Women Adrift: Independent Wage Earners in Chicago, 1880-1930<\/em> (University of Chicago Press, 1988); Ruth Alexander, <em>Girl Problem: Female Sexual Delinquency in New York, 1900-1930<\/em> (Cornell University Press, 1995); and Shelley Stamp, <em>Movie-Struck Girls: Women and Motion Picture Culture after the Nickelodeon<\/em> (Princeton University Press, 2000). <a href=\"#post-35733-footnote-ref-9\">\u2191<\/a><\/li>\n<li id=\"post-35733-footnote-10\">Kathy L. Peiss, <em>Cheap Amusements: Working Women and Leisure in Turn-of-the-Century New York <\/em>(Temple University Press, 1986); Nan Enstad, Ladies of Labor, <em>Girls of Adventure: Working Women, Popular Culture, and Labor Politics at the Turn of the Twentieth Century <\/em>(Columbia University Press, 1999). <a href=\"#post-35733-footnote-ref-10\">\u2191<\/a><\/li>\n<li id=\"post-35733-footnote-11\">\u201cLetters to the Editor,\u201d <em>Motion Picture Magazine<\/em> (December 1916): 169. <a href=\"#post-35733-footnote-ref-11\">\u2191<\/a><\/li>\n<li id=\"post-35733-footnote-12\">\u201cLetters to the Editor,\u201d <em>Motion Picture Magazine<\/em> (May 1917): 163-64. <a href=\"#post-35733-footnote-ref-12\">\u2191<\/a><\/li>\n<li id=\"post-35733-footnote-13\">Ashstfu, Aug.7, 2021; youwrotemeletters, Feb. 2, 2022. <a href=\"#post-35733-footnote-ref-13\">\u2191<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Feature Image Caption: A teacher points to a diagram of female reproductive organs projected on a screen in a classroom in a scene from Human Growth, an education film on sex education shown to students in Oregon junior high schools beginning in 1948. (Courtesy <a href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/97453745@N02\/9684411481\">Tullio Saba)<\/a><\/p>\n<\/section>\n<p><!-- MOLONGUI AUTHORSHIP PLUGIN 5.1.0 --><br \/>\n<!-- https:\/\/www.molongui.com\/wordpress-plugin-post-authors --><\/p>\n<div class=\"m-a-box \" data-box-layout=\"slim\" data-box-position=\"below\" data-multiauthor=\"false\" data-author-id=\"604\" data-author-type=\"user\" data-author-archived=\"\">\n<div class=\"m-a-box-container\">\n<div class=\"m-a-box-tab m-a-box-content m-a-box-profile\" data-profile-layout=\"layout-1\" data-author-ref=\"user-604\" itemscope=\"\" itemid=\"https:\/\/nursingclio.org\/author\/diana-w-anselmo\/\" itemtype=\"https:\/\/schema.org\/Person\">\n<div class=\"m-a-box-content-middle\">\n<div class=\"m-a-box-item m-a-box-avatar\" data-source=\"local\"><a class=\"m-a-box-avatar-url\" href=\"https:\/\/nursingclio.org\/author\/diana-w-anselmo\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"90\" height=\"90\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nursingclio.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/T03NECAK3-U0808NA889E-407caa5a34c5-512.jpg?fit=90%2C90&amp;ssl=1\" class=\"attachment-90x90 size-90x90\" alt=\"\" itemprop=\"image\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nursingclio.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/T03NECAK3-U0808NA889E-407caa5a34c5-512.jpg?w=512&amp;ssl=1 512w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nursingclio.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/T03NECAK3-U0808NA889E-407caa5a34c5-512.jpg?resize=405%2C405&amp;ssl=1 405w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nursingclio.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/T03NECAK3-U0808NA889E-407caa5a34c5-512.jpg?resize=181%2C181&amp;ssl=1 181w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nursingclio.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/T03NECAK3-U0808NA889E-407caa5a34c5-512.jpg?resize=150%2C150&amp;ssl=1 150w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nursingclio.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/T03NECAK3-U0808NA889E-407caa5a34c5-512.jpg?resize=70%2C70&amp;ssl=1 70w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nursingclio.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/T03NECAK3-U0808NA889E-407caa5a34c5-512.jpg?resize=90%2C90&amp;ssl=1 90w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nursingclio.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/T03NECAK3-U0808NA889E-407caa5a34c5-512.jpg?resize=300%2C300&amp;ssl=1 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 90px) 100vw, 90px\"\/><\/a><\/div>\n<div class=\"m-a-box-item m-a-box-data\">\n<div class=\"m-a-box-bio\" itemprop=\"description\">\n<p>Diana W. Anselmo&#8217;s work focuses on queer film reception in the Progressive Era and affective labor in US media history. She is currently working on the Portuguese history of lithium, thermal waters, and public health in the long nineteenth century, as well as a history of fire and early film exhibition in Europe and the US. She is currently a Nursing Clio Writer in Residence.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"wp-block-group has-border-color\" style=\"border-style:none;border-width:0px;margin-top:32px;margin-bottom:32px;padding-top:0px;padding-right:0px;padding-bottom:0px;padding-left:0px\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-group__inner-container is-layout-flow wp-block-group-is-layout-flow\">\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide\" style=\"margin-bottom:24px\"\/>\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading has-text-align-center\" style=\"margin-top:4px;margin-bottom:10px\">Discover more from Nursing Clio<\/h3>\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\" style=\"margin-top:10px;margin-bottom:10px;font-size:15px\">Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cFilmitis\u201d: When Movie Fandom Became a Medical Condition In 1916, when Hollywood cinema first emerged, \u201cfilmitis\u201d debuted in US cultural debate as \u201cthe most modern of diseases, the last cry in pathology.\u201d Likened to an infection \u201cover which physicians and scientists have no control,\u201d filmitis described an excessive attachment to cinema, with fans becoming obsessed [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":308332,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12032],"tags":[15852,1278,4300,4560,2581,15851],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-308331","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-american-history","tag-clio","tag-condition","tag-fandom","tag-medical","tag-movie","tag-nursing"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.4 - 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