Henry Leber Coit was born on March 16, 1854 in Peapack, New Jersey, United States, the son of John Summerfield and Ellen (Neafie) Coit. His father, a Methodist minister, died while Henry was still a boy, and his mother moved to Newark to bring up her children.
Coit attended the public schools in Newark and went from them to the New York College of Pharmacy, from which he graduated as valedictorian with the class of 1876. After working for a few years as a chemist with Tarrant & Company, he entered the College of Physicians and Surgeons, and graduated in 1883.
About 1883 Coit began his practise of medicine in Newark. Pediatrics had already become his chief interest when in 1889 the difficulty of obtaining cows’ milk of a uniform high standard was forcibly brought home to him. In seeking clean milk for his own dying baby he saw the forty-quart cans from which the city’s milk was being casually ladled. The experience indicated to him his life-work. He lost his own son, but his unremitting efforts to raise the standards of cleanliness for milk and to impress on the public and on the medical profession the relation between milk and infant mortality have saved the lives of countless children. Failing, after persistent appeals, to obtain help from the New Jersey legislature, he enlisted the voluntary aid of physicians and dairymen. In a paper read before the Practitioners’ Club of Newark on December 5, 1890, he coined the term “certified milk” and outlined the method by which the initial cleanliness of milk might be insured. His plan “provided for a commission of medical men who, with the support of physicians generally, should, by voluntary supervision, paid expert inspection, and final certification, endeavor to influence a supply of milk produced under regulations imposed by themselves. ” He formulated minute regulations for securing clean hands, clean udders, clean pails, sterile containers, healthy cows, safe workingmen, good feed and fodder, suitable bedding, and proper housing.
In 1893 his plan was put into effect on a dairy farm near Fairfield, New Jersey, and was shown to be practicable, in spite of the greatly increased cost of production. To the dairyman the principal danger came from the unscrupulous opposition of large milk distributing companies. The example of the Essex County Medical Milk Commission was imitated in New York in 1896 and in Philadelphia in 1897; at the time of Coit’s death there were sixty such commissions in the United States, and the movement had spread to Canada, Europe, and Asia.
An American Association of Medical Milk Commissions, of which Coit was twice president, kept the commissions in touch with one another. The indirect effect of these commissions in raising the general standard of cleanliness among dairymen has been enormous. Coit was also vice-president of the International Society of Milk Dispensaries, with headquarters in Brussels, and visited Europe four times as a delegate to medical congresses.
The other great work of his life began in 1896 with the opening in Newark of the Babies’ Hospital, the second institution of its kind in the United States. He had done much to make the hospital possible, and to its welfare he gave time and attention without stint, his last visit to it as attending physician being made on the day before his death from pneumonia.
His death was undoubtedly hastened by overwork. An epidemic of infantile paralysis had visited Newark and its vicinity the previous summer. Sacrificing his vacation, Coit had taken active charge of the medical relief work and had accomplished a task that alone would entitle him to the gratitude of his fellow citizens.
Henry Laber Coin was recognized for his work on the care and feeding of infants. He was instrumental in organizing Essex County Medical Milk Commission and founding the Newark Babies' Hospital. Among his most important publications were The Feeding of Infants (1890); The Care of the Baby (1894); Causation of Disease by Milk (1894); Clean Milk in its Economic and Medical Relations with Special Reference to Certified Milk (1908); The Public School as a Factor in Preventing Infant and Child Mortality (1912); and Certified Milk (1912).
Coit was a member of the American Association of Medical Milk Commissions and International Society of Milk Dispensaries.
In 1886 Coit married Emma Gwinncll of Newark.
