SOCIAL HYGIENE.

Taranaki Daily News, 29 September 1920, Page 7

SOCIAL HYGIENE.

CONBATTING SERIOUS DISEASE. The important question of social hygiene wa3 the subject of an address given by Mrs. F. McHugh, to a wellattended women's meeting at tho Soldiers' Club rooms, New Plymouth, yesterday afternoon. The Mayoress (Mrs. J, Clarke) presided. The lecturer is ■touring tho Dominion under the auspices of the Public Health Department. Mrs. McHugh is fully competent to explain her Early in the war she proceeded to England to offer her services for war work, and at the request of tho Y.M.C.A. she took up work amongst the New Zealand soldiers. She spent ten months at Walton-on-Thames, and later was prominent in the establishment of a Women's International Street Patrol, which did a great amount of good amongst the soldiers. Many women of the. unfortunate class were converted to good citizens, and did useful war work. From their number a women's training corps was formed. Mrs. MoHugh is a member of the Council appointed by the British Medical Association for combatting disease, and is at present under engagement by the Health Department-,to confer with the •women of the Dominion in regard to so-cial-legislation to be introduced. In the course of her lecture, Mrs. McHugh stressed the great need of action in regard to the social hygiene movement. She remarked on the alarming spread of a certain disease throughout the country, and the ravages caused by this scourge. The lecturer quoted statistics showing its widespread effects, and advocated the education of the young people in tho. laws of sex. At the conclusion of the address, the meeting carried a resolution in favor of the proposal to make this disease corny pulsorily notifiable, each ease to be designated by a number.

Chief Detective Mellveney stated at the Christchurch Magistrate's Court on Monday morning that the. amount of thieving that had been going on about the railway goods shed recently was "simply appalling." Mr. S. -E. McCarthy, S.M., in sentencing a married man to one month's imprisonment for having stolen a motor cycle from the railway station, said; "The position the Court is faced with it this—'both t': > railway goods shed and the waterfroi. are becoming unsafe for public "property or anyone's property, and it is necessary, in the interests of the public, that thefts froia these places be dealt with firmly,"