750 
rience must have taught them, too, the onh- way in which the milk 
supply of the District could ever be controlled at its source, viz, by a 
system of permits or licenses, a method which was adopted in the Dis- 
trict in 1895 and which has since come into more or less general use 
throughout the country, lldiat these men say with respect to this 
matter, in view of the time when it was said, is well worth quotation 
at length : 
The milk supply of this District is from dairies established in the county, 
and in the neighboring States of Virginia and Maryland; and as a proper 
inspection would include the examination and sanitary control to some extent 
of the dairies, as well as the milk when offered for sale here, we recommend 
that the board require dealers to procure permits before they can dispose of 
their milk here. By this means supervision might be obtained over them, even 
in Virginia and Maryland, and we doubt not that the dairymen would readily 
adopt suggestions looking to the proper preservation of their milk from un- 
healthy contaminations.® 
And the then health officer. Dr. P. T. Keene, in submitting to the 
board of health the rejDort of the food inspectors, recommended that 
“ the regular inspection of dairies and the requirement of licenses to 
vendors of milk under strict provisions should at once be instituted.” ^ 
In its third annual report, covering the year ending September 30, 
1874, the board of health published a statement by Dr. B. F. Craig, 
its chemist, who had analyzed a number of samj^les of milk, most of 
which, said Doctor Craig, “ appeared to have some portion of the 
cream removed, or else to have been originally of poor quality.” 
After commenting upon possible sources of error in the use of the 
lactometer and upon the importance of chemical examination, he 
adds : 
but before chemical examination can produce any effect there should be a 
legal definition of the character of what can be sold as milk and what may be 
sold as skimmed milk, and, I would suggest, of what may be sold as cream. 
The law can at present take hold of nothing but the proved addition of water 
or other adulterants. It should also be made to cover the case of removal of 
cream, and in fact to exclude from the market all milk below a certain quality, 
that quality being determined by the amount of water in the milk and the 
amount of fatty matter or cream to be obtained from it.® 
The health officer, in his report to the board of health for 1875, 
again calls attention to the importance of inspecting milk at the 
places of production: 
For meats and milk, per example, the most important of all, we are entirely 
at the mercy of the producers, and must continue so to be until the abattoir, 
or some other system, be established by which it may be possible to inspect 
every animal at the time of slaughtering, and until some carefully organized 
plan of checking adulteration of milk be inaugurated. * * * And this I find 
® Report of Board of Health, 1872, p. 124. 
^ Report of Board of Health, 1872, p. 121. 
® Report of Board of Health, 1874, pp. 206, 207, 
