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Social History of Medicine 1993 6(2):213-235; doi:10.1093/shm/6.2.213
© 1993 by Society for the Social History of Medicine
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‘A Scourge to be firmly gripped‘: The Campaign for VD Controls in Interwar Scotland

ROGER DAVIDSON*

*Department of Economic and Social History, University of Edinburgh Edinburgh EH8 9JY

SUMMARY Social and medical historians of venereal disease (VD) in interwar Britain have largely focused on the voluntaries strategies implemented by central government following the recommendations of the Royal Commission on Venereal Diseases. However, within Scotland a more interventionist stance was adopted and a vigorous campaign mounted for the introduction of VD controls incorporating notification and/or compulsory treatment. Based on a range of governmental and private archives, this paper analyses the major impulses and constraints shaping the campaign. It examines the interplay both within and between the various pressure groups in Scottish health politics, including medical practitioners, public health administrators, local authorities, social hygiene movements and womens' organizations. The unsuccessful outcome of the campaign is seen to have rested primarily on the lack of any clear professional consensus in favor of controls, in broader societal concerns over the constitutional and medico-legal implication of compulsion, and in the continuing fear that legislation would in practice discriminate against women and patients voluntarily attending public VD clinics. Also decisive was the unwillingness of the Ministry of Health to permit Scottish experimentation in contentious VD regulations that might impact upon English public health proced

Keywords: Scotland; venereal disease; the state; interwar Britian; public health; syphilis; women's organizations; medical profession; Social Hygiene Movement; notification; compulsory treatment


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S. Lemar
'The Liberty to Spread Disaster': Campaigning for Compulsion in the Control of Venereal Diseases in Edinburgh in the 1920s
Soc Hist Med, April 1, 2006; 19(1): 73 - 86.
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