He was born on July 13, 1874 in Quincy, Illinois, United States, the younger of two children, both of them boys, of William Snow and Emily M. (Streeter) Snow. Later the family moved to Biggs, California, where the father kept a small store.
Snow went to high school in Oakland and to Stanford University, where he majored in chemistry, receiving his B. A. in 1896. After taking an M. A. in physiology from Stanford in 1897, he entered Cooper Medical College, San Francisco, and graduated, M. D. , in 1900. He studied ophthalmology at Johns Hopkins in 1901-1902.
After studies William returned to Stanford as assistant professor of hygiene. Snow's increasing interest in public health was reflected in his promotion at Stanford to professor of hygiene and public health in 1909. To lend authority to his investigations, he had early taken positions as deputy county health officer and volunteer epidemiologist for the state board of health.
He left Stanford in 1909 to become secretary and executive officer of the California State Board of Health. There he demonstrated the concerns and methods that were to dominate the rest of his career: attacking the venereal diseases through education of the public, through interorganizational coordination, and through patient, persistent committee work. Snow was the first secretary of the California Public Health League.
By 1912, when he was elected president of the Association of State and Provincial Boards of Health, he was deeply committed to the social hygiene movement. That movement represented a merging of two earlier ones: the attack on prostitution as a moral and social evil, and the attack on venereal disease as a public health problem. The outstanding leader in the latter cause prior to 1913 was Prince A. Morrow, founder of the American Society for Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis (1905). This grew in 1910 into the American Federation for Sex Hygiene (with Snow a member of the committee that formulated the constitution and bylaws). Three years later, leaders of the Federation and of the antivice American Vigilance Association joined together to form the American Social Hygiene Association. Snow was called to New York City to become general secretary (later general director) of the new association.
Snow and the ASHA saw that their first task was to change public attitudes toward venereal disease. They issued leaflets, published articles, arranged symposia, and instituted the quarterly journal Social Hygiene. When American troops were mobilized on the Mexican border in 1916, Snow, representing the ASHA, was one of those who urged Secretary of War Newton D. Baker to eliminate prostitution and alcohol from the environs of military camps and to carry out moral education among the troops. This prepared the way for an intensive and unprecedentedly successful campaign against venereal disease instituted within weeks after the United States entered World War I.
Snow himself served as secretary of the general medical board of the Council of National Defense and as chairman of its Committee on Civilian Cooperation in Combating Venereal Diseases. Snow, by now a lieutenant colonel in the Medical Corps, was the army's representative on the board and chairman of its executive committee until it expired in 1922.
Snow participated in a meeting of Red Cross societies at Cannes, France, in April 1919, and was largely responsible for the report of the section on venereal diseases, which outlined a comprehensive program. He is also credited with having strongly influenced President Wilson to insist on including in the League of Nations covenant a clause giving it supervision over agreements for the suppression of traffic in women and children. Snow served as chairman of the League's body of experts to investigate this traffic from 1924 to 1928. Snow took a leading role in the formation of the National Health Council in 1921 and served as its president from 1927 to 1934.
Active until the end, he died suddenly in Bangor, Maine, of a coronary occlusion at the age of seventy-five.
William Freeman Snow helped to form the California Association for the Study and Prevention of Syphilis and Gonococcus Infections. Under Snow's direction the Board of Health greatly expanded health information programs. Snow was also a founder of the California Public Health League, designed to coordinate the activities of various groups fighting tuberculosis and other health problems. Guiding the social hygiene movement from just before World War I to the late 1930's, Snow as much as any individual was responsible for the change in American attitudes toward syphilis, which converted it from a sin that could not be discussed to an infectious disease that could be openly attacked as a problem of public health.
His moral fervor had no religious dimension; as a young scientist and physician he had turned strongly against the accepted dogmas of his Protestant upbringing.
Snow concluded that both medical and moral approaches were necessary for any long-term attack on venereal diseases.
With his public health background, high standards of personal conduct, and moral courage, Snow proved an ideal leader. Short in stature, modest and gracious in manner, he had a cheerful disposition and was generous to his co-workers and subordinates. He was never a polished public speaker but was formidable in private debate, persuasive in small groups, and highly effective in working behind the scenes.
Snow married Blanche Malvina Boring of Palo Alto, California, on August 15, 1899. They had two sons, William Boring and Richard Boring.
