120 THE MILK SITUATION IN THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA. 



cases for certified milk is a maximum of 10,000 bacteria per cubic 

 centimeter. The requirements fixed upon for certified milk contem- 

 plates especially that none but healthy cows shall be employed ; that 

 extraneous contamination of their milk shall be reduced to a mini- 

 mum; that the milk shall be cooled to 45 F. to prevent bacterial 

 growth; and that it shall reach the consumer before noticeable bac- 

 terial changes have occurred therein. 



BREAST FEEDING DECIDEDLY PREFERABLE TO BOTTLE FEEDING. 



The committee wishes to emphasize in the most forceful manner 

 the extreme importance of feeding, at the mother's breast, as opposed 

 to artificial feeding with cow's milk. It is a well-known fact that 

 the rate of mortality during the first year of infants fed on human 

 breast milk is markedly less than among bottle-fed babies. The 

 milk of the cow is directly responsible for the death of a very con- 

 siderable percentage of infants. Nature did not intend the young of 

 one species to be raised upon the milk of another, much less did it 

 intend that that milk should be dirty, stale, and bacteria-laden. 



Cow's milk may be prejudicial to health either because the milk 

 is physiologically unsuitable, as for infant feeding, or because it 

 has become a medium of infection through contamination with 

 various disease germs. Milk of inferior nutritive value, furthermore, 

 must indirectly have a deleterious influence on the health of the 

 infant, and particularly so when, as in the case of babies, milk is 

 exclusively used as food. During the first year of its life a child 

 consumes, it is estimated, about 500 quarts of milk. There is abun- 

 dant evidence to show that the proportion of deaths among infants 

 would be greatly reduced if they received the food nature designed 

 for them, namely, mother's milk. An eminent authority on the rela- 

 tion of mortality to artificial feeding of infants concludes that, 

 taking the period of the first year or life, the number of deaths 

 resulting from epidemic diarrhea among breast-fed babies is not 

 much more than one-tenth the number occurring among artificially- 

 fed infants. There is no doubt that the nursing of all infants by 

 healthy mothers would contribute tremendously to the reduction of 

 the infantile death rate. It has been said that there is only one other 

 period in life in which the chance of death is greater than in the 

 case of infants under 1 year of age, and that is in persons over 90 

 years old. This comparison emphasizes the extreme importance of 

 providing milk, especially for infant consumption, which shall be 

 physiologically suitable for assimilation and as free as possible from 

 impurities. 



It should be animadverted to in this connection as emphasizing 

 the important influence of providing milk free from impurification. 

 that during the period elapsing since the passage of the local milk- 

 inspection law in 1895, the annual death rate of infants in the Dis- 

 trict of Columbia has decreased from 194 per 100,000 population to 

 86 per 100,000. * This marked diminution may fairly be attributed 

 in large measure to the beneficent effects of this law. 



1 72 per 1,000 in 1909, increasing to 86 in 1910. 



