rmit 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.

+Genital and Non-genital Syphilis in Lax Individuals.+--The prevalence
of syphilis among women who receive promiscuous attentions is enormous.
It is practically an axiom that no woman who is lax in her relations
with men is safe from the danger of the disease, or can long remain free
from it. The type of man who is a Light o' Love does not go far before
he meets the partner who has been infected by some one else. Becoming
infected himself, he passes on his infection to his next partner.
Syphilis is not so often transmitted in prostitution, open or secret, as
gonorrhea, but it is suff