Wassermann Before Wedding Bells: Premarital Examination Laws in the United States, 1937–1950

Abstract

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.