The social hygiene movement in the United States was an attempt by Progressive era reformers to control venereal disease, regulate prostitution and vice, and disseminate sexual education through the use of scientific research methods and modern media techniques. Social hygiene as a profession grew alongside social work and other public health movements of the era. Social hygienists emphasized sexual continence and strict self-discipline as a solution to societal ills, tracing prostitution, drug use and illegitimacy to rapid urbanization. The movement remained alive throughout much of the 20th century and found its way into American schools, where it was transmitted in the form of classroom films about menstruation, sexually transmitted disease, drug abuse and acceptable sexual behavior in addition to an array of pamphlets, posters, textbooks and films.
Dame Mary Ann Dacomb Scharlieb, DBE was a pioneer British female physician and gynaecologist in the late 19th/early 20th centuries. She had worked in India. She was the first female student of medicine at Madras Medical College. After her graduation and work in India, she went to England to do her Postgraduation in Medicine (gynecology) and by her persistence she returned to the UK to become a qualified doctor. She returned to Madras and eventually lectured in London. She was the first woman to be elected to the honorary visiting staff of a hospital in the UK and one of the most distinguished women in medicine of her generation.
The American Sexual Health Association (ASHA), formally known as the American Social Hygiene Association and the American Social Health Association, is an American nonprofit organization established in 1914, that cites a mission to improve the health of individuals, families, and communities, with an emphasis on sexual health, as well as a focus on preventing sexually transmitted infections and their harmful consequences. ASHA uses tools such as education, communication, advocacy and policy analysis activities with the intent to heighten public, patient, provider, policymaker and media awareness of STI prevention, screening, diagnosis and treatment strategies.
Is Your Daughter Safe?, also known as The Octopus, was an early American silent exploitation film produced and directed by S. S. Millard. Written by Max Abramson, it was originally released in 1927 and presented around the United States in the following years.
The Racial Hygiene Association of New South Wales (RHA) was an Australian-based association founded in 1926 by Lillie Goodisson and Ruby Sophia Rich of the Women's Reform League. The association was originally known as the Racial Improvement Society until 1928. It is now known as Family Planning NSW.
Lavinia Lloyd Dock was an American nurse, feminist, writer, pioneer in nursing education and social activist. Dock was an assistant superintendent at Johns Hopkins School of Nursing under Isabel Hampton Robb. She founded what would become the National League for Nursing with Robb and Mary Adelaide Nutting. Dock was a contributing editor to the American Journal of Nursing and authored several books, including a four-volume history of nursing and Materia Medica for Nurses, the nurse's standard manual of drugs for many years. In her later life, she also campaigned for social reform, particularly women's rights.
Vera Lewis was an American film and stage actress, beginning in the silent film era. She appeared in more than 180 films from 1915 to 1947. She was married to actor Ralph Lewis.
Katharine Bement Davis was an American progressive era social reformer and criminologist who became the first woman to head a major New York City agency when she was appointed Correction Commissioner on January 1, 1914. Davis was a former school teacher from upstate New York, who later became one of the nation's first female doctorates when she received her Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago in 1901. Davis was also known for her work as an American penologist and a writer who had a long-lasting effect on American penal reform in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Edith Houghton Hooker was an American suffragist and social worker. She was a leader of the suffrage movement in Maryland in the early twentieth century and was posthumously inducted into the Maryland Women's Hall of Fame. She was a maternal aunt of actress Katharine Hepburn.
Elizabeth Gould Bell was the first woman to practice as a qualified medical doctor in the north of Ireland—in Ulster—and was a vocal and militant suffragist. In a protest action by the Women's Social and Political Union, in 1913-14, she engaged in a series of arson attacks directed against the Unionist establishment in Belfast. Amnestied at the outbreak of the First World War, she became one of the first women to work with the Royal Army Medical Corps. In her last years, she continued to campaign for maternity and child welfare services.
The Notorious Mrs. Sands is a 1920 American silent drama film directed by Christy Cabanne and produced by and starring Bessie Barriscale.
The New Women's Association was a Japanese women's rights organization founded in 1919. The organization strove to enhance women's rights in the areas of education, employment, and suffrage. It also aimed to protect women from venereal disease by attempting to prevent men with these diseases from marrying, as well as by allowing women whose husbands had these diseases to get a divorce. The organization played an important role in changing Article 5 of the Public Peace Police Law, which had prohibited women from participating in public meetings. NWA also enlisted the help of men as advocates for women in politics.
Sybil Neville-Rolfe OBE was a social hygienist and founder of the Eugenics Society, and a leading figure in the National Council for Combating Venereal Diseases. She has been described as a feminist and a eugenicist.
Jane Parker Deeter Rippin (1882–1953) was an American social worker, who served as the national director of the Girl Scouts of the USA from 1919 until 1930. During her tenure, she saw Girl Scout membership quintuple from 50,000 to 250,000; she also oversaw the formation of local Girl Scout councils and the start of Girl Scout cookie sales.
The Chamberlain–Kahn Act of 1918 is a U.S. federal law passed on July 9, 1918, by the 65th United States Congress. The law implemented a public health program that came to be known as the American Plan, whose stated goal was to combat the spread of venereal disease.
Clelia Lollini was an Italian medical doctor. She helped to found the Medical Women's International Federation and the Italian Women's Medical Association.
Mabel Simis Ulrich was an American medical doctor and health educator, lecturing nationally on sex and hygiene for the YWCA. She also wrote, owned several bookstores, and ran the Minnesota Writers' Project during the 1930s.
The Commission on Training Camp Activities (CTCA), also popularly known as the Fosdick Commission, was an umbrella agency within the United States Department of War during World War I that provided recreational and educational activities for soldiers as they trained for combat. Established in April 1917, the CTCA had the mandate to keep American troops "physically healthy and morally pure", while also motivating them to fight.
Fit to Fight is a silent sex hygiene film about the dangers of venereal disease written and directed by Edward H. Griffith. It was produced by the Commission on Training Camp Activities and initially shown to American World War I soldiers. After the war, a slightly edited version was commercially released to the public in 1919, under the title Fit to Win. The film proved controversial due to its graphic imagery and its limited support for prophylaxis. It was subject to censorship attempts, and contributed to the emergence of the exploitation film as a distinct niche.
Vera Ruth Gordon Douie (1894–1979) was a Scottish librarian. She is known as the first librarian at The Women's Service library. She was an active member of the women's rights movement and her work was recognised with an OBE in 1967.
