People in the social hygiene movement of the late 19th and early 20th aimed to create high standards of what they considered to be moral and sexual responsibility. They wanted to prevent venereal disease, tuberculosis, addiction and mental illness, which were often considered as linked problems. In some countries, the social hygiene movement represented a rationalized, professionalized version of the earlier
social purity movement. Many social hygienists were also supporters of
eugenics. Concerned by
degeneration and
heredity, they argued for negative eugenics: that some groups should be encouraged or forced to stop procreating.
Australia This link between
racial hygiene and social hygiene movements can be seen in Australia, where the
Racial Hygiene Association of New South Wales is now named The Family Planning Association.
Bulgaria In Bulgaria, the journal
Borba discussed social hygiene. Articles suggested that feminism and anti-alcoholism would help to reduce venereal disease but women's involvement in social hygiene campaigns was controversial.
Germany Social welfare politics in early 20th-century Germany were dominated by social hygiene and it became a discipline in German medical universities. The chair of
Sozialhygiene was created for
Alfred Grotjahn at the
University of Berlin in 1920. Social hygiene campaigns continued in India into the Interwar period.
Soviet Union The social hygiene approach was adopted in medical schools in the
Soviet Union in the 1920s and was supported by the
Commissariat of Public Health. The definition adopted by Commissar
Nikolai Semashko was less focussed on eugenics and more in line with what is now regarded as
public health: “study of the influence of economic and social factors on the incidence of disease and on the ways to make the population healthy”.
Sweden In Sweden, socialist and feminist groups campaigned for sex hygiene and education from the early 20th century. as organisations such as
Josephine Butler's Ladies' National Association and the
Association for Moral and Social Hygiene (AMSH) wanted to make men equally responsible for their sexual morals and behaviour rather than to only punish women sex workers. This approach was a response to the
Contagious Diseases Acts. The Acts were repealed in 1886.
William Ormsby-Gore was chair, and membership overlapped with that of the NCCVD and the AMSH. During the early 20th century, social hygienists in the US successfully campaigned for legal and bureaucratic changes. Its member's ideas were published in journals such as the
American Journal of Public Health. ASHA partnered with the government during World War I. The Association provided social hygiene health and sexual health information to soldiers in hopes that this education would help reduce the number of men who were unable to fight due to the effects of venereal diseases. During World War II, ASHA continued to work with the government, including on a project targeting African American communities. From the 1940s, social hygienists such as Ruth Beach argued that parents were failing to educate their children in sex hygiene and said that more schools should provide this education. Social hygiene ideas were spread 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. == See also ==