syphilis would make him subject to severe penalties in many states for a violation of professional confidence, or to suit for libel.  Of course, if the patient has agreed to submit to examination to determine his fitness for marriage, the physician’s path is clear, but if the condition is discovered in ordinary professional relations, there is nothing to be done except to try to persuade the patient not to marry—­advice he usually rejects.  To this blind policy of protecting the guilty at the expense of the innocent an immeasurable amount of human efficiency and happiness has been sacrificed.  Fortunately there are signs of an awakening.  For example, Ohio has recently amended the law so as to permit a physician to disclose to the parties concerned that a person about to be married has a venereal disease (Amendment to Section 1275, General Code, page 177).  This is preventive legislation, as distinguished from the old policy of locking the stable door after the horse was stolen by laws punishing one who infects another with a venereal disease after marriage has been contracted.  Recent Supreme Court decisions (Wisconsin) have also taken the ground that a venereal disease existing at the time of marriage and concealed from the other party is ground for annulment of the marriage, provided the uninfected party ceases to have marital relations as soon as the fact is discovered.

The problem of syphilis in its relation to marriage is, of course, a serious one.  It is safe to say that it will never be completely met except by a vigorous general public program against syphilis as a sanitary problem.  It is by no means so serious, however, that it need lead clean young men and women to remain single for fear they will encounter it.  The medical examination of both parties before marriage, efficiently carried out by disinterested experts, each perhaps of the other’s appointing, is the best insurance a man and woman can secure at the present day against the risk that syphilis will mar their happiness.[12]

    [12] The problem of gonorrhea is not considered in the framing of
    this statement.

Chapter XIII

The Transmission and Hygiene of Syphilis (Continued)

SYPHILIS AND PROSTITUTION

In taking up the consideration of the relation of syphilis to illicit sexual relations, we must again remind ourselves that we are approaching this subject, not as moralists, important though their point of view may be, but for the time being as sanitarians, considering it from the standpoint of a method of transmission of a contagious disease.