"sex-hygiene,"
was at first a sanitary propagandism need not interfere with the larger
development of sex-education. It now seems probable that before many
years pass we shall learn how to make a satisfactory combination of
both the sanitary and moral sides of sex-education, and so it is best
that the educational movement started on the foundation of the
undisputed facts of sanitary science which have made a powerful
impression on the people who do and who do not recognize a code of
sexual morals.

[Sidenote: Medical interest.]

The deep interest of the medical profession is directly responsible for
the close association between the beginning of the sex-education
movement and the diseases of immorality. At the organization meeting of
the American Society of Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis, Dr. Prince
Morrow in the opening paragraph of his address said: "We have met for
the purpose of discussing the wisdom and the expediency of forming a
society of sanitary and moral prophylaxis. The object is to organize a
social defense against a class of diseases which are most injurious to
the highest interests of human society." Thus, the American Society of
Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis started as an avowed enemy of the social
diseases and so it has continued to the present. The very name of its
official journal, _Social Diseases_,[19] indicated the central idea of
the Society. Likewise, most of the local American societies for
sex-hygiene have names including such phrases as "social hygiene,"
"prevention of social diseases," "sanitary prophylaxis"; and only one,
the Massachusetts Society for Sex Education, has a name which does not
directly suggest the medical problems of sex.

[Sidenote: In Europe.]

In Europe, the sex-instruction movement has been concerned chiefly with
spreading information concerning the social diseases. In 1902 an
international congress for consideration of the venereal diseases was
held in Brussels, and this congress recommended that in all countries
there should be organized sanitary, social, moral, and legal societies
for the prophylaxis of these diseases. As a result of this
recommendation, prophylactic societies were formed in France, Germany,
Italy, Holland, the United States, and other countries. Of these, the
German society for the prevention of venereal disease became the
strongest, with over five thousand members and twenty branch
societies.

[Sidenote: National societies.]

The fact that t