304 MEDICAL SECTION 



Milk is the universal natural food of the infant, 

 therefore for our species breast milk must always be 

 the standard, and in determining artificial methods 

 human milk should constantly be kept in mind. 

 All substitutes for breast milk should approximate 

 woman's milk in physical and chemical properties, 

 and the basis for the successful use of foreign 

 milks is a synthetic adjustment of their differences 

 in composition. 



There are as many varieties of milk, so called, 

 as there are different sources of supply, variations in 

 the practice of cleanliness, varieties of animal yielding 

 milk, changes caused by the addition of foreign sub- 

 stances to fortify it, or by its thermic and chemical 

 treatment. Milk of a suitable quality for successful 

 substitute infant feeding will never be obtained until 

 physicians and pediatricians realize that they must 

 expend more energy on this problem than upon any 

 other. Milk fit for clinical purposes can only be 

 secured by unremitting and concerted professional 

 effort, with no lapse of vigilance. After a personal 

 experience of twenty-four years the conviction is 

 forced upon me that it is impossible to obtain milk 

 of a grade required for medical work in the hospital 

 and the home through official or legal control of 

 methods. 



Since from 40 to 60 per cent, of our children are 

 at some time deprived of their natural food, the 

 attainment of pure and safe milk becomes the most 

 imnortant material factor in successful artificial feeding 

 and the preservation of infant life. 



In the United States the so-called pure milk 

 movement was in the beginning entirely professional 

 and altruistic, and while its influence stimulated the 

 municipal and the federal activities for the better- 

 ment of general milk supplies and protection of 

 public health, it still remains in the hands of the 

 medical profession, with the single object of obtaining 



