The development of American public health, a commentary: three documents that made an impact.

Arguably, three documents epitomize the development of the public health movement in the United States. The 1850 'Report of a General Plan for the Promotion of the Public and Personal Health of Massachusetts,' provided the theoretical and organizational basis for the development of an infrastructure for the American public health movement. The 1932 Report of the Committee on the Costs of Medical Care, 'Medical Care for the American People,' laid out a series of challenges for the humane, effective, and economical delivery of health and medical services to the American people, and the 1964 Report of the Advisory Committee to the Surgeon General on 'Smoking and Health' provided a paradigm of evidence-based public health policy.

Vignettes of the history of epidemiology: Three firsts by Janet Elizabeth Lane-Claypon.

In 1912, Janet Elizabeth Lane-Claypon, a British medical scientist 35 years of age who had already contributed substantial research findings in the fields of reproductive physiology and the bacteriology and biochemistry of milk, reported the results of a retrospective cohort study of weight gain during the first year of life among 204 infants fed boiled cows' milk compared with 300 infants fed human breast milk. The results of her investigation revealed that, up to the age of 208 days, breastfed infants gained more weight than infants fed boiled cows' milk. After that time period, weight gain was equal in the two groups.