SOCIAL HYGIENE. Although, strictly, social hygiene should deal broadly with all aspects of hygiene in a narrower sense than general hygiene which is the duty of the State and in a broader sense than personal hygiene which is the duty of the individual, the term, at the present time, is usually contracted in its significance to imply hygiene with respect to sex problems alone. Many branches of medicine, economics and government are concerned intimately with sex problems, e.g., mental disease, national insurance, housing, recreation, education, alcoholism, drug addiction; but these, as such, are not included in social hygiene though their importance with reference to the question at issue is manifest. Nor do the different attitudes taken towards sex prob lems in different parts of the world, east compared with west, north compared with south, enter into the question, though ob viously when a population is drawn from many widely differing sources such points must merit grave consideration. To a large extent social hygiene is a product of civilization and tends to be most highly developed in the most highly civilized countries. And yet it is not civilization as such, for in many ancient civilizations of high order social hygiene was but little prosecuted. Rather it is a product of the health and morality which are functions of certain types of civilization. Thus in the Mosaic Code, social hygiene in its modern sense is evident to a far greater extent than it was in Athenian civilization. In the main, problems of social hygiene are dealt with locally rather than nationally or internation ally but the establishment of free venereal clinics shows that there is a national side while the concern of the League of Nations over the white slave traffic indicates the international aspect.
The recognized measures employed in the programme of social hygiene are educational, legal and protective and medical. The educational measures aim to promote among the general public an understanding of sex problems and of the best methods and ex perience in dealing with them, to promote sex education as a nor mal feature of character education, avoiding undue emphasis upon sex as such, and to promote the training of teachers, leaders of religious and social agencies and parents, for their task in the sex aspect of character education. The legal and protective meas
ures are concerned with the repression of prostitution, the pro motion of sound legislation and effective law enforcement in sup port of social hygiene measures, and of improvements in the organization and administration of police departments and of courts and institutions caring for sex offenders. They seek the prevention of delinquency through the development of desirable and adequate recreational opportunities, the use of women police in the supervision of public recreational facilities and through the extension of the preventive work being carried on by child guid ance clinics, vocational adjustment bureaus, visiting teacher asso ciations and voluntary protective agencies. Medical measures aim at the prevention and cure of the venereal diseases. The principal means employed are : instruction of the public in regard to the seriousness and the means of prevention of these diseases, and the necessity for early diagnosis and treatment of infected per sons; the provision of facilities which are adequate and available for diagnosis and treatment ; follow-up case work to encourage consistent. attendance for treatment and to bring contacts of infectious patients under control ; research for improvements in diagnostic and therapeutic procedures and materials; more thor ough training of practitioners of medicine to deal with these diseases; and continuous study of the prevalence of the venereal diseases and the effectiveness of the various control measures employed.