The Royal Commission on Venereal Disease reported that there was a vast
amount of ignorance as to the dangers arising from the sexual
intercourse of married persons one of whom had previously to the
marriage contracted syphilis or gonorrhœa. The effect upon the
birth-rate, and the misery caused during married life, and in many cases
to the offspring who survive, as they pointed out, are most serious, and
the fact that the actual cause of the trouble often remains unknown and
unrecognized prevents the calamity from serving the purpose of example
or warning.
Some of the witnesses heard before the present Committee have urged that
a certificate of good health, or at least a certificate of freedom from
communicable disease, should be required from each party to a proposed
marriage before the Registrar issued a license to marry. The Royal
Commission considered that "it would not be possible at present to
organize a satisfactory method of certification of fitness for
marriage." The National Birth-rate Commission, however, reported that in
their opinion the question should be reconsidered with a view to
legislation.
There is much to be said in favour of such a proposal from the point of
view of national health. If the system were adopted the certificate
should, in the opinion of the present Committee, include freedom from
mental disease as well as freedom from communicable disease. But there
are manifest difficulties in the way, chiefly in regard to the delicate
and searching examination which would be required in the case of women
before a doctor could certify positively to the absence of communicable
disease.
The Committee recommend that instead of a medical certificate each party
to a proposed marriage should be required to answer appropriate
questions in regard to the presence or absence of communicable and
mental disease, and to make a sworn statement before the Registrar as to
the truth of the answers. It should be the duty of the Registrar to
communicate the contents of the statements to the other party in the
event of any admission of the presence of communicable disease.
In addition to the penalty for making a false statement it might be
provided, as in the Queensland Act, that venereal disease shall be a
ground for annulling a marriage contract when one party is suffering at
the time of marriage from such disease in an infectious state, provided
the other party was not informed of the fact prior to marriage.
The Committee would also recommend the adoption of a further provision
that it should be the duty of a medical practitioner attending a case of
venereal disease which is or is likely to become infective, if he has
reason to believe that the patient intends to marry, to warn him or her
against doing so, and if he or she persists it should be the duty of the
doctor forthwith to notify the case by name to the Director-General of
Health, whose duty it should be to inform the other party. It should
also be provided that _bonâ fide_ communications made in such a case,
either by the Director-General of Health or the doctor, to the other
party to the marriage, or to the parents or guardian of such party,
shall be privileged.