JOHN HARVEY KELLOGG

'John Harvey Kellogg' (February 26, 1852 – December 14, 1943) was an American medical doctor in Battle Creek, Michigan who ran a sanitarium using holistic methods, with a particular focus on nutrition, enemas and exercise. Kellogg was an advocate of vegetarianism, and is best known for the invention of the corn flake breakfast cereal with his brother, Will Keith Kellogg.

Contents

Personal life

Battle Creek Sanitarium

Disagreements with Adventist Leaders

Breakfast cereals

Anti-sex and Anti-masturbation positions

Race Betterment Center

Selected publications

Popular culture

See also

External links

Footnotes

Resources

Personal life

Kellogg was born in Tyrone, Michigan,^[1] to John Preston Kellogg (1806–1881) and Ann Janette Stanley (1824–1893). John lived with two sisters during childhood. The family had moved to Battle Creek, Michigan, by 1860 where his father set up a broom factory. John later worked as a printer's devil in a Battle Creek publishing house.
Kellogg went to the Battle Creek public school system, then attended the Michigan State Normal School (since 1959, Eastern Michigan University), and finally New York University Medical College at Bellevue Hospital. He graduated in 1875 with a medical degree. He married Ella Ervilla Eaton (1853–1920) of Alfred Center, New York, on February 22, 1879. They did not have any children of their own, but raised over forty children, legally adopting seven of them, before Ella died in 1920. The adopted children include: Agnes Grace Kellogg; Elizabeth Kellogg; John William Kellogg; Ivaline Maud Kellogg; Paul Alfred Kellogg; Robert Moffatt Kellogg; and Newell Carey Kellogg. Kellogg died in 1943 and was buried in Oak Hill Cemetery in Battle Creek.

Battle Creek Sanitarium

Kellogg gained fame while working at the Battle Creek Sanitarium which ran on Seventh-day Adventist Church principles. They believed in a vegetarian diet and a regimen of exercise.
Kellogg was an especially strong proponent of nuts, which he believed would save mankind in the face of decreasing food supply. Though mainly renowned nowadays for his development of corn flakes, Kellogg also patented a process for making peanut butter and invented healthful "granose biscuits."
At the Battle Creek Sanitarium, Kellogg held classes on food preparation for homemakers. Sanitarium visitors engaged in breathing exercises and mealtime marches to promote proper digestion of food throughout the day. Because Kellogg was a staunch supporter of phototherapy, the sanitarium also made use of artificial sunbaths.
Kellogg made sure that the bowel of each and every patient was plied with water, from above and below. His favorite device was an enema machine that could rapidly instill several gallons of water in a series of enemas. Every water enema was followed by a pint of yogurt — half was eaten, the other half was administered by enema “thus planting the protective germs where they are most needed and may render most effective service”. The yogurt served to replace the intestinal flora of the bowel, creating what Kellogg claimed was a squeaky clean intestine.
Kellogg believed that most disease is alleviated by a change in intestinal flora; that bacteria that is in the intestines can either help or hinder the body; that pathogenic bacteria produce toxins during the digestion of protein that poison the blood; that poor diet also favors harmful bacteria that can then infect other tissues in the body; that the intestinal flora is changed by the diet of the individual, and is changed for the better, generally, with a well-balanced vegetarian diet that favors low-protein, laxative and high-fiber foods; and that this natural change in flora could be sped by enemas seeded with favorable bacteria, or by various regimens of specific foods designed to heal specific ailments.
Kellogg was a skilled surgeon, who often donated his services to indigent patients at his clinic.^[2] Although a surgeon himself, Kellogg was against any unnecessary use of surgery to cure diseases,^[3][4] although he advocated circumcision.

Disagreements with Adventist Leaders

In the early 1900s, Kellogg published "The Living Temple", a book whose sale was intended to raise funds for the Sanitarium. Several Adventist leaders, including A.G. Daniells and Ellen G. White, concluded that the book was pantheistic, in its portrayal of the nature and work of the Holy Spirit. In 1907, Kellogg took himself and the Sanitarium out of the denomination.

Breakfast cereals

With his brother, Will Keith Kellogg, they started the Sanitas Food Company to produce their whole grain cereals around 1897, a time when the standard breakfast for the well-to-do was eggs and meat, while the poor ate porridge, farina, gruel, and other boiled grains. John and Will later argued over the recipe for the cereals (Will wanted to add sugar to the flakes) so in 1906 Will started his own company called “the Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flake Company”, which eventually became the Kellogg Company. They never spoke to each other again. John then formed the Battle Creek Food Company to develop and market soy products.
(John did not invent the concept of the dry breakfast cereal. That honor belongs to Dr. James Caleb Jackson who created the first dry breakfast cereal in 1863, which he called Granula. A patient of John's, Charles William Post, would eventually start his own dry cereal company selling a rival brand of corn flakes.)

Anti-sex and Anti-masturbation positions

Kellogg did a great deal to warn about the supposed dangers of sexual activity. He outlined his views on this subject in his book ''Plain Facts for Old and Young''. He warned against nearly all sexual activity, including a large chapter about the many “excesses” couples could be guilty of within marriage. He drew on the warnings of William Acton and expressed support for the work of Anthony Comstock. He appears to have gone beyond his own advice, since though he and his wife were married for over 40 years, they never had sexual intercourse and had separate bedrooms all their lives. It has been suggested he worked on ''Plain Facts'' on their honeymoon. ^[5]
He was an especially zealous campaigner against masturbation, recommending extreme methods. In his ''Treatment for Self-Abuse and its Effects'' he wrote:
Believing that masturbation was a sensual sin of the flesh, self-abuse, and an obsessive habit common to adolescent males and others, he advocated exposing the sensitive glans, which during masturbation would be subject to friction. In addition, the removal of the protective foreskin would further reduce sensory pleasures from the habit. Reducing the sensory pleasure, it was felt, would also reduce boys' rebelliousness. He also claimed that masturbation was a primary cause of acne, extreme mental and physical debility, heart disease, atrophy of the testes, dimness of vision, epilepsy, and insanity. Kellogg also believed that one should guard one's emissions as he believed people possessed a fixed amount of "vital energy." He also recommended, to prevent children from this "solitary vice," that one could bandage or tie their hands, cover the genitalia with a patented cage structure, and even use electrical shocking.^[6]
Dr. Kellogg wrote that "neither the plague, nor war, nor small-pox, nor similar diseases, have produced results so disastrous to humanity as the pernicious habit of onanism." He felt that masturbation destroyed not only physical and mental health, but
the moral health of individuals as well. Kellogg also believed the practice of "solitary-vice" caused cancer of the womb, urinary diseases, nocturnal emissions, impotence, epilepsy and insanity. Kellogg was the first to mention the psychological role in
producing insanity. To fight the urge to practice masturbation Kellogg offered a number of remedies to the young and old. He believed that young and old should maintain an abstemious diet, eating only twice a day. They should avoid stimulating food and drinks, and very little meat if any should be consumed. Kellogg also advocated hydrotherapy and stressed the importance of keeping the colon clean through yogurt enemas.^[7][8]

Race Betterment Center

Kellogg was also outspoken on his beliefs on race and segregation. In 1906, Kellogg founded—together with Irving Fisher and Charles Davenport—the Race Betterment Foundation, which became a major center of the new eugenics movement in America. Kellogg was in favor of racial segregation and believed that immigrants and non-whites would damage the gene pool.

Selected publications

★ 1877 ''Plain Facts For Old And Young: Embracing The Natural History And Hygiene Of Organic Life''

★ 1888 ''Treatment for Self-Abuse and its Effects, Plain Facts for Old and Young''

★ 1893 ''Ladies Guide in Health and Disease''

★ 1903 ''Rational Hydrotherapy''

★ 1910 ''Light Therapeutics''

★ 1914 ''Needed -- A New Human Race'' Official Proceedings: Vol. I, Proceedings of the First National Conference on Race Betterment. Battle Creek, MI: Race Betterment Foundation, 431-450.

★ 1915 ''The Eugenics Registry'' Official Proceedings: Vol II, Proceedings of the Second National Conference on Race Betterment. Battle Creek, MI: Race Betterment Foundation.

★ 1922 ''Autointoxication or Intestinal Toxemia''

★ 1923 ''Tobaccoism or How Tobacco Kills''

★ 1927 ''New Dietetics: A Guide to Scientific Feeding in Health and Disease''

★ 1929 ''Art of Massage: A Practical Manual for the Nurse, the Student and the Practitioner''[4]

Popular culture

★ T. Coraghessan Boyle's 1993 comic novel ''The Road to Wellville'' is a fictionalized story about Kellogg and his sanitarium.

★ A filmed version of the book, directed by Alan Parker, was released in 1994. It starred Anthony Hopkins as Kellogg.

★ Mel Brooks' 1995 film '' featured a sanitarium boss named "Dr. Jack Seward" (played by Harvey Korman), who would recommend enemas for every conceivable ailment. The character was clearly based on Kellogg, and in one scene is seen eating corn flakes. (Dr. Seward is the name of a character in the novel ''Dracula'', by Bram Stoker.)

See also

★ Sylvester Graham

External links

★ New York Times Obituary, December 16, 1943 ''J. H. Kellogg Dies; Health Expert, 91''

★ Findagrave: John Kellogg

★ Etext of ''Plain Facts For Old And Young''

★ Dr. John Harvey Kellogg and Battle Creek Foods: Work with Soy from the Soy foods Center

★ Dr. John Harvey Kellogg from the Battle Creek Historical Society

★

★ Adventist Archives Contains many articles written by Dr. Kellogg

Footnotes

1. While the ''New York Times'' obituary for Kellogg [1] gives his place of birth as Tyrone, New York, other reliable sources, including the Battle Creek Historical Society [2] and the indicate that he was born in Tyrone Township, Livingston County, Michigan.
2. http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0771956.html Biographical sketch.] ''Infoplease.com''
3. Kellogg, Dr. John Harvey 1923. ''Natural Diet of Man''
4. Kellogg, Dr. John Harvey 1923. ''Autointoxication''
5. [3]
6. Kellogg, John Harvey; ''Treatment for Self-Abuse and its Effects, Plain Facts for Old and Young''; F. Segner & Co.; Burlington, Iowa (1888).
7. Numbers, Ronald L, "Sex, Science, and Salvation: The Sexual Advice of Ellen G. White and John Harvey Kellogg," in ''Right Living: An Anglo-American Tradition of Self-Help Medicine and Hygiene'' ed. Charles Rosenberg, 2003., pp. 218-220
8. http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2007/fortune/0702/gallery.rich_eccentrics.fortune/4.html

Resources

★ Schwarz, Richard W. ''John Harvey Kellogg: Pioneering Health Reformer''. Hagerstown, MD: Review and Herald, 2006