Many anti-venereal disease groups existed in the early 1900s and they shared the optimistic outlook of many other social reformers - people of the era committed to attacking undesirable conditions ranging from child labor to political corruption to impure foods. ASHA's longevity can be attributed to the strong leadership over its 86 year history. An early ASHA supporter was Thomas N. Hepburn, M.D., who joined 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.