CERTIFIED MILK 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 
wholesome artificial food. 
Educational measures are therefore demanded for the restoration 
of the function of the female breast. In the meantime a pure supply 
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 reported 
no less than 500 epidemics of typhoid fever, diphtheria, and scarlet 
fever within the last half century in which the infection was trans- 
mitted 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 life 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 1889 and 1893, respectively; the first had for 
its object the control and distribution of milk to infants of the poor 
and the education of mothers in infant hygiene ; the second, the pro- 
duction under the control of a medical milk commission of pure or 
“ certified ” milk for clinical purposes. 
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 
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