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Deborah B Doroshow, Wassermann Before Wedding Bells: Premarital Examination Laws in the United States, 1937–1950, Social History of Medicine, Volume 34, Issue 1, February 2021, Pages 141–169, https://doi.org/10.1093/shm/hkz057
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Summary
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.