MARRIAGE AND GONORRHEA
Decision of Physician Regarding Marriage of Patients Infected with Gonorrhea or Syphilis—Advisability of Certificate of Freedom from Transmissible Disease—Premarital Examination as a Universal Custom—When a Man Who Had Gonorrhea May Be Allowed to Marry—When a Woman Who Had Gonorrhea May be Allowed to Marry—Antisepsis Before Coitus—Question of Sterility in the Man Who Has Had Gonorrhea Easily Answered—Impossibility of Determining Whether the Woman is Fertile or Not.
For a man or a woman who has once suffered from gonorrhea or syphilis to enter matrimony without having secured a competent physician's opinion is a great responsibility. And a great responsibility rests upon the shoulders of the physician who is called upon to give such an opinion. For, a wrong decision—a wrong decision either way—that is, permission to marry when permission should not have been granted or refusal to give permission when permission should have been granted—may be responsible for much future unhappiness and much disease: disease of the mother and of the offspring. It may even be responsible for death.
There is no easy, short road to a positive opinion. It requires a thorough, painstaking examination at the hands of an experienced physician, one thoroughly familiar with all the modern tests, to tell whether it is safe for a man who once suffered from venereal disease to enter the bonds of matrimony. Sometimes one examination is not sufficient, and several examinations may be necessary; but, the opinion of a conscientious, experienced physician may be relied upon, and, if all men and women who once suffered from venereal disease would seek for, and be guided by, such an opinion, there would be no cases of marital infection, there would be no children afflicted with gonorrheal ophthalmia, there would be no cases of hereditary syphilis.
I firmly believe that a time will come when all venereal disease will have disappeared from the face of the earth. But, until that time comes, it would be for the benefit of the race and of posterity if people had to present a certificate of freedom from transmissible venereal disease as a prerequisite to a marriage license. Custom is often more efficient than law, and, if a premarital examination should become a universal custom (and there are indications in this direction), no law would be needed.
When May a Man Who Had Gonorrhea Get Married? For a man who once suffered from gonorrhea to be pronounced cured and a safe candidate for marriage, the following conditions must be present:
1. There must be no discharge.
2. The urine must be perfectly clear and free from shreds.
3. The secretion from the prostate gland, as obtained by prostatic massage, and from the seminal vesicles, as obtained by "milking," or "stripping," the vesicles, must be free from pus and gonococci. To make sure, it is best to repeat such examination at three different times.
4. There must be neither stricture nor patches in the urethra.