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- Title
Wassermann Before Wedding Bells: Premarital Examination Laws in the United States, 1937–1950.
- Authors
Doroshow, Deborah B
- Abstract
In the late 1930s, states began to pass laws requiring men and women applying for marriage licences to demonstrate proof of a blood test showing that they did not harbour communicable syphilis. Advocates of the laws positioned marriage as a public health checkpoint to identify new cases of syphilis as part of a broader effort to approach the disease as a public health problem, rather than a moral one. Although the laws appeared to have broad popular support, in reality they were a failed public health intervention. Couples rushed to the altar before laws went into effect and border-hopped to marry in states without blood test laws. The blood tests used to detect syphilis were difficult to interpret and physicians could not agree on a standard definition of communicable disease. But for over 30 years, premarital examination laws represented a tangible government presence in the private lives of most Americans.
- Subjects
MARRIAGE licenses; SYPHILIS; BLOOD testing; STATE laws; PUBLIC health; COMMUNICABLE diseases
- Publication
Social History of Medicine, 2021, Vol 34, Issue 1, p141
- ISSN
0951-631X
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1093/shm/hkz057