CERTIFIED XIILK AND INFANTS’ MILK DEPOTS. 
By John W. Kerr, 
Assistant Surgeon-General , Public Health and Marine- Hospital Service. 
“She can milk; look you, a sweet virtue in a maid with clean hands.” — Shakespeare. 
The increasing complexity of community life with its attendant evils 
has had an influence in the reduction of maternal feeding of infants 
and at the same time has rendered less accessible a supply of whole- 
some artificial food. 
Educational measures are therefore demanded for the restoration 
of the function of the female breast. In the meantime a pure sup- 
ply of cow’s milk for clinical purposes is of vital importance, a fact 
becoming more and more recognized by physicians and others inter- 
ested in the reduction of infant mortality and the improvement of 
conditions among the poor. 
Its importance is also emphasized by sanitarians who have re- 
ported no less than 500 epidemics of typhoid fever, diphtheria, and 
scarlet fever within the last half century in which the infection was 
transmitted by infected milk. 
In consequence of a just appreciation of these conditions measures 
have been adopted in various sections of this and other countries to 
prevent the enormous waste of human fife which is known to occur 
within the first year after birth — due mainly to a lack of proper 
food. 
Through private initiative two notable movements were started in 
the United States in 1893; the first had for its object the production, 
under the control of a medical milk commission, of pure or “ certified” 
milk for clinical purposes, the second the control and distribution of 
milk to infants of the poor and the education of mothers in infant 
hygiene. 
CERTIFIED MILK. 
The term “ certified milk” was coined by Dr. Henry L. Coit of 
Newark, N. J., who in 1892 formulated a plan for the production of 
pure milk under the auspices of medical milk commissions. This 
plan contained the following general requirements: 
“ First. That physicians give their practical support to an effort 
conducted- by a medical milk commission selected by a medical 
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