The two organizations change their name to the American Social Hygiene Association
In the early 1900’s, Prince A. Morrow, a prominent New York Physician, brought the problem of venereal disease into full public view. Morrow, later known as the Father of Social Hygiene, began to speak out and write on the necessity of preventing venereal disease. Soon several local groups and societies were formed across major cities to address what one Chicago society termed sex hygiene. Members of the various anti-venereal disease groups in existence by 1910 shared the optimistic outlook of many other social reformers. They refused to accept the problem of venereal disease as insurmountable. Major breakthroughs in diagnosis and treatment, particularly the discovery of Salvarsan, an effective treatment for Syphilis – appeared to give good reason for such optimism. Soon, education and publicity became primary weapons for the battle. However, one important reform element was missing: an organization to initiate and coordinate efforts on a nationwide basis. Prince Morrow had seen this need for a unified command in 1905, but his death in 1913 came before his dream was realized, but he had inspired and recruited the architects of the alliance that was created the following year.
Thomas N. Hepburn, MD, a young physician had joined the social hygiene cause after attending to a young woman who had died of acute gonorrheal peritonitis just months after her marriage to a man whose friends had put him to bed with a prostitute at his bachelor party. Hepburn also discovered a play by French playwright Eugene Brieux, Damaged Goods, which he noted “dealt dramatically with syphilis and its inheritance."
Prince Morrow, still behind the action to merge two primary organizations, the American Vililance Association and the American Federation for Sex Hygiene, sent Hepburn to Cambridge to ask Charles Eliot, President Emeritus of Harvard University, to serve as the honorary president. With Eliot on board, the leaders of the two organizations met in 1914, only months after Morrow’s death, to discuss a merger. After discussion, the representatives voted to adopt the constitution and consolidate as the American Social Hygiene Association (ASHA).
