(Several spectators shuffle their feet, and an old maid giggles, but no one comes forward.)
The Clergyman
(To the Bride and Bridegroom): I require and charge both of you, as ye will answer in the dreadful hour of autopsy, when the secrets of all lives shall be disclosed, that if either of you know of any lesion, infection, malaise, congenital defect, hereditary taint or other impediment, why ye may not be lawfully joined together in eugenic matrimony, ye do now confess it. For be ye well assured that if any persons are joined together otherwise than in a state of absolute chemical and bacteriological innocence, their marriage will be septic, unhygienic, pathogenic and toxic, and eugenically null and void.
(The Bridegroom hands over a long envelope, from which the Clergyman extracts a paper bearing a large red seal.)
The Clergyman
(Reading): We, and each of us, having subjected the bearer, John Doe, to a rigid clinical and laboratory examination, in accordance with Form B-3 of the United States Public Health Service, do hereby certify that, to the best of our knowledge and belief, he is free from all disease, taint, defect, deformity or hereditary blemish, saving as noted herein. Temperature per ora, 98.6. Pulse, 76, strong. Respiration, 28.5. Wassermann,—2. Hb., 114%. Phthalein, 1st. hr., 46%; 2nd hr., 21%. W. B. C., 8,925. Free gastric HCl, 11.5%. No stasis. No lactic acid. Blood pressure, 122/77. No albuminuria. No glycosuria. Lumbar puncture: clear fluid, normal pressure.
Defects Noted. 1. Left heel jerk feeble. 2. Caries in five molars. 3. Slight acne rosacea. 4. Slight inequality of curvature in meridians of right cornea. 5. Nicotine stain on right forefinger, extending to middle of second phalanx.
(Signed)
Sigismund Kraus, M.D.
Wm. T. Robertson, M.D.
James Simpson, M.D.
Subscribed and sworn to before me, a Notary Public for the Borough of Manhattan, City of New York, State of New York.
(Seal) Abraham Lechetitsky.