scholarly journals ‘Apostles of Continence’: Doctors and the Doctrine of Sexual Necessity in Progressive-Era America

2016 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-106 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy Verhoeven
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Progressive Era ◽  
Venereal Disease ◽  
Young Men ◽  
Medical Community ◽  
Social Hygiene ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Face ◽  
Social Hygiene Movement

In the first decades of the twentieth century, a group of doctors under the banner of the social hygiene movement set out on what seemed an improbable mission: to convince American men that they did not need sex. This was in part a response to venereal disease. Persuading young men to adopt the standard of sexual discipline demanded of women was the key to preserving the health of the nation from the ravages of syphilis and gonorrhoea. But their campaign ran up against the doctrine of male sexual necessity, a doctrine well established in medical thought and an article of faith for many patients. Initially, social hygienists succeeded in rallying much of the medical community. But this success was followed by a series of setbacks. Significant dissent remained within the profession. Even more alarmingly, behavioural studies proved that many men simply were not listening. The attempt to repudiate the doctrine of male sexual necessity showed the ambition of Progressive-era doctors, but also their powerlessness in the face of entrenched beliefs about the linkage in men between sex, health and success.

Medical Men, Moralists, and the Roots of Sex Education

2021 ◽  
pp. 19-66
Author(s):  
Kristy L. Slominski
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Sexual Behavior ◽  
Sex Education ◽  
Scientific Information ◽  
Sexual Morality ◽  
Dynamic Interactions ◽  
Social Hygiene ◽  
Joint Strategy ◽  
Social Hygiene Movement

Chapter 1 examines the liberal Protestant roots of the American Social Hygiene Association (ASHA), a clearinghouse for the early sex education movement. ASHA emerged from the combination of two distinct movements: social purity and social hygiene. Liberal Protestantism came to influence sex education through the merging of these strands and the collective realization that scientific information was not enough to influence sexual behavior. This chapter locates the roots of ASHA in social purity groups of the 1870s, many of which were led by Unitarians and Quakers and focused on ridding society of prostitution. The chapter explores their evolving relationship with the physician-dominated social hygiene movement that began in the early twentieth century, demonstrating that liberal religious concerns about sexual morality impacted sex education through the dynamic interactions between purity reformers and social hygienists. ASHA became the organization within which both groups developed a joint strategy for teaching the moral side of sex.

The Congregation of the Great Synagogue in Warsaw: Its Changing Social Composition and Ideological Affiliations

1998 ◽  
pp. 112-126
Author(s):  
Alexander Guterman
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Jewish Population ◽  
Social Dynamics ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Ongoing Process ◽  
Social Composition ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Face

This chapter details how the congregation of the Great Synagogue in Warsaw reflected the social dynamics that had transformed the face of Warsaw Jewry. They included an increasingly large proportion of Jews whose way of life distanced them from the devoutly Orthodox masses. Many showed clear signs of acculturation, Polonization, and an ongoing process of assimilation, although such behaviour may not have been motivated by any clear ideology of integration into the Polish nation. While many of the Great Synagogue's leaders tried to influence the views of the congregation, it was the members themselves who shaped the image of the synagogue. Their loyalties represented the spectrum of allegiances in the Jewish population of Warsaw at the time, and as Jews from the countryside joined their brethren in the capital, the Great Synagogue came to reflect the social and ideological transformations taking place among Polish Jewry in the early part of the twentieth century, especially between the two world wars.

Conclusion

2020 ◽  
pp. 177-182
Author(s):  
Reva Marin
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
Gender Justice ◽  
Systemic Racism ◽  
Positive Elements ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Face ◽  
Just Society ◽  
Rich Material

Accounts of interracialism in white jazz autobiography may best be viewed as works in progress toward a more just society, comparable to the growing movement for gender justice in the contemporary jazz world. Unlike the more unsparing critiques of white appropriation and theft that leave little space for the positive elements of interracialism in popular culture, this book resists the cynicism and despair that come from the belief that individuals are powerless in the face of systemic racism; rather, it proposes a reading of jazz autobiography that stresses the importance of individuals in breaking down the social structures upon which racist laws and institutions depend. Finally, it proposes that the accounts of these autobiographers—from the most embracing to the most virulent—provide rich material for teaching and studying twentieth-century US race history and offer paths for resisting the intolerance of our present time.

‘Venereal Trouble’: The Case of ‘Professor’ Abraham Eastburn

2018 ◽  
pp. 12-29
Author(s):  
Roger Davidson
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Content Analysis ◽  
Medical Profession ◽  
Moral Panic ◽  
Venereal Disease ◽  
World War ◽  
Treatment And Prevention ◽  
The Social ◽  
The First World War ◽  
First World

Chapter 2 investigates the prosecution of ‘Professor’ Abraham Eastburn in 1919 as a means of exploring the interface between the law and the moral panic surrounding VD in early twentieth century Scotland that reached its peak during and immediately after the First World War. A detailed narrative of his background and practice, together with a content analysis of his posters and handbills, furnish valuable insights into the widespread and continuing recourse to unregistered healers and quack remedies. The failure of qualified practitioners and established therapies to meet the needs of those suffering from venereal infections is surveyed. Eastburn’s’ prosecution is then contextualised within the social politics shaping the creation of a nation-wide health system for the diagnosis, treatment and prevention of VD, and the outlawing, under growing pressure from the medical profession, of all venereal advice and treatment by unqualified practitioners under the 1917 Venereal Disease Act..

‘A Friendly and Familiar Book for the Busy: William Arthur’s the Successful Merchant: Sketches of the Life of Mr Samuel Budgett

2002 ◽  
Vol 37 ◽  
pp. 275-288
Author(s):  
Martin Wellings
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Holy Spirit ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
Young Men ◽  
The Other ◽  
Central Character ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Holy Spirit ◽  
The Relationship

Sir Henry Lunn (1859-1939), former Wesleyan minister and missionary turned journalist, ecumenical pioneer, and successful entrepreneur, wrote several volumes of autobiography in the first third of the twentieth century. Reflecting some fifty years later on the strengths and weaknesses of the Methodism of his youth in Chapters from My Life (1918), he wrote: Our pulpits in the ’70s …. had largely lost touch with the Catholic idea of poverty as one of the great virtues. Some years earlier a much-revered President of the Wesleyan Conference had written two widely different books. One was a powerful assertion of the need for the Baptism of the Holy Spirit in Christian work. The other was a glorification of a rich Methodist tradesman. Both books had a large circulation.The ‘much-revered President’ was William Arthur (1819-1901), President of the Conference in 1866, and his ‘two widely different books’ were Tlie Tongue of Fire (1856) and The Successful Merchant: Sketches of the Life of Mr Samuel Budgett, late ofKingswoodHill (1852). The Tongue of Fire, hailed as a spiritual classic in the nineteenth century and much reprinted then and thereafter, examined the role and importance of the Holy Spirit in Christian life and work. The Successful Merchant, written four years earlier and equally successful in publishing terms, was more controversial in subject-matter and message. As will be seen, it attracted mixed reviews, and some contemporaries shared Henry Lunn’s disquiet at the portrayal of the central character. Arthur himself dedicated the book ‘to the young men of commerce’, and claimed that his purpose was to meet the need for a Christian ‘Commercial Biography’, thereby encouraging informed reflection on the relationship between faith and work. This paper seeks to place The Successful Merchant, described by its author as ‘a friendly, familiar book for the busy, in context in the genre of Methodist biographical literature, in the social and ecclesiastical setting of mid-nineteenth-century Wesleyanism, and in the debate on work and wealth which has been a strand in Methodist identity, history, and historiography since the days of the Wesleys. First, however, some attention must be given to the book itself, its author, and its hero.

scholarly journals Институализация социальной гигиены в Советской России в 1920-1930-х годах в международном контексте

2020 ◽  
pp. 85-94
Author(s):  
Yulia Kirik ◽  
Pavel Ratmanov ◽  
Polina Shenoeva
Keyword(s):  
Early Years ◽  
Medical Community ◽  
State University ◽  
Social Hygiene ◽  
Communist Ideology ◽  
Academic Medical ◽  
The Social ◽  
New Period ◽  
Soviet Russia ◽  
The One

This article is devoted to the emergence, development and liquidation of organizations and units of social hygiene in Soviet Russia in 1918–1934, as well as the analysis of this process in the international context. The first social-hygienic institution in the country was the State Museum of Social Hygiene of the People's Commissariat of Health of the Soviet Russia. The first department of social hygiene was organized only in 1922 in the 1st Moscow State University. By the end of the 1920s there were already 18 such departments. In 1929, the country entered a new period of collectivization of agriculture and industrialization of industry. In the early 1930s all social hygiene institutes in the Soviet Russia were gradually liquidated. The institutionalization of social hygiene in Russia began a decade later than in Europe. In our opinion, social hygiene in Russia in the early years of Soviet power was primarily a tool for legitimizing the power of the Bolsheviks and the communist ideology. Identifying of and combating with the social causes of diseases, on the one hand, was in line with the spirit of communism, and on the other, it had a significant share of populism. Thus, the institutionalization of social hygiene was initiated from above not only for the academic medical community, but also for the People's Commissariat of Health. The political situation in this project prevailed over the scientific and educational agenda.

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