The demand that a medical certificate of health should be 

compulsory on marriage, has been especially made in France. In 

1858, Diday, of Lyons, proposed, indeed, that all persons, 

without exception, should be compelled to possess a certificate 

of health and disease, a kind of sanitary passport. In 1872, 

Bertillon (Art. "Demographic," _Dictionnaire Encyclopedique des 

Sciences Medicales_) advocated the registration, at marriage, of 

the chief anthropological and pathological traits of the 

contracting parties (height, weight, color of hair and eyes, 

muscular force, size of head, condition of vision, hearing, etc., 

deformities and defects, etc.), not so much, however, for the end 

of preventing undesirable marriages, as to facilitate the study 

and comparison of human groups at particular periods. Subsequent 

demands, of a more limited and partial character, for legal 

medical certificates as a condition of marriage, have been made 

by Fournier (_Syphilis et Mariage_, 1890), Cazalis (_Le Science 

et le Mariage_, 1890), and Jullien (_Blenorrhagie et Mariage_, 

1898). In Austria, Haskovec, of Prague ("Contrat Matrimonial et 

L'Hygiene Publique," _Comptes-rendus Congres International de 

Medecine_, Lisbon, 1906, Section VII, p. 600), argues that, on 

marriage, a medical certificate should be presented, showing that 

the subject is exempt from tuberculosis, alcoholism, syphilis, 

gonorrhoea, severe mental, or nervous, or other degenerative 

state, likely to be injurious to the other partner, or to the 

offspring. In America, Rosenberg and Aronstam argue that every 

candidate for marriage, male or female, should undergo a strict 

examination by a competent board of medical examiners, concerning 

(1) Family and Past History (syphilis, consumption, alcoholism, 

nervous, and mental diseases), and (2) Status Presens (thorough 

examination of all the organs); if satisfactory, a certificate of 

matrimonial eligibility would then be granted. It is pointed out 

that a measure of this kind would render unnecessary the acts 

passed by some States for the punishment by fine, or 

imprisonment, of the concealment of disease. Ellen Key also 

considers (_Liebe und Ehe_, p. 436) that each party at marriage 

should produce a certificate of health. "It seems to me just as 

necessary," she remarks, elsewhere (_Century of the Child_, Ch. 

I), "to demand medical testimony concerning capacity for 

marriage, as concerning capacity for military service. In the one 

case, it is a matter of giving life; in the other, of taking it, 

although certainly the latter occasion has hitherto been 

considered as much the more serious." 

The certificate, as usually advocated, would be a private but 

necessary legitimation of the marriage in the eyes of the civil 

and religious authorities. Such a step, being required for the 

protection alike of the conjugal partner and of posterity, would 

involve a new legal organization of the matrimonial contract. 

That such demands are so frequently made, is a significant sign 

of the growth of moral consciousness in the community, and it is 

good that the public should be made acquainted with the urgent 

need for them. But it is highly undesirable that they should, at 

present, or, perhaps, ever, be embodied in legal codes. What is 

needed is the cultivation of the feeling of individual 

responsibility, and the development of social antagonism towards 

those individuals who fail to recognize their responsibility. It