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John Harvey Kellogg is known as the father of modern breakfast cereal. He was born in Tyrone Township, Michigan, on February 26, 1852, into a Seventh Day Adventist family. At age 12, he became an apprentice at the Review and Herald Press, a publishing company run by the church. He attended school in Battle Creek, Michigan. He attended Bellevue Hospital Medical College in New York where he received his medical degree in 1875. In 1876, at the age of 24, Kellogg became an abdominal surgeon and superintendent of the Western Health Reform Institute, which he renamed the Battle Creek Sanitarium. There, he began applying his theories about natural living to his medical practice. Himself a vegetarian, he first advocated a diet high in whole grains, fruits, nuts, and legumes. He later included all types of vegetables in the diet. His controversial health regimen included morning calisthenics, open-air sleeping, cleansing enemas, chewing food hundreds of times before swallowing, and drinking plenty of water.
In the 1890s, Kellogg established a laboratory at the sanitarium to develop more nutritious foods. His brother, Will Keith Kellogg, joined in his research. In 1895 they developed a breakfast cereal of wheat flakes called Granose. The cereal quickly grew in popularity and was soon sold by mail order. This was followed by rice flakes and corn flakes. The brothers established the Sanitas Food Company. But philosophical differences led them to split into two companies. Will founded the W. K. Kellogg Company, which retained the rights to the cereal products. John set up the Battle Creek Food Company, which produced coffee substitutes and soymilk. John Kellogg also edited Good Health Magazine, which promoted vegetarianism, for 60 years. In 1904, he published a book, The Miricle of Life. He continued to promote his version of healthy living and radical techniques until his death in 1943.
[Article by: Ken R. Wells]
| Biography: John Harvey Kellogg |
John Harvey Kellogg (1852-1943) revolutionized the American diet by inventing flaked breakfast cereals first known as Wheat Flakes and Corn Flakes. An avid health reformer, skilled surgeon, and physician, Kellogg's extensive writing and lecturing contributed to a new emphasis on the importance of a healthy diet, adequate exercise, and natural remedies near the end of the nineteenth century.
Kellogg was born on February 26, 1852, in Tyrone Township, a rural community within Livingston County, Michigan. He was the fourth of the eight children that survived infancy born to John Preston, a farmer, and Ann Janette (Stanley) Kellogg. Before Kellogg turned one year old, his parents joined the Seventh-day Adventist movement and moved their large family, which included five children from John Preston Kellogg's first marriage, to Jackson, Michigan. About three years later, the Kelloggs relocated to Battle Creek, Michigan, the headquarters for the newly formed Adventist Church in 1863. In fact, a portion of the profit from the sale of the Kellogg farm funded the transfer of the Adventist publishing venture from Rochester, New York, to Battle Creek. The Adventists evolved from the mid-nineteenth-century religious sect called the "Millerites," who were known for predicting the exact date of Christ's return. Co-founded by James and Ellen G. White, the Adventists also focused on the second coming of Christ, emphasizing the health and purity of their communities as a means of preparation.
Developed Interest in Health
Kellogg's early formal education was inconsistent. Helping his father, who then operated a small grocery store and broom factory, was more important than school. Nonetheless, he supplemented his learning by reading a great deal on his own. When Kellogg was 12 years old, James White, serving as the first Adventist publisher, began teaching him the printing business. For four years Kellogg apprenticed in the Adventist publishing house. During this time, Ellen G. White, the church's acknowledged prophetess, began publishing articles on health reform. As Kellogg set the type for White's articles, which stressed healthy living as a religious duty of all Seventh-Day Adventists, he became very interested in issues of health and hygiene. Along with reading White's views, Kellogg also studied early health reformers Sylvester Graham and Larkin B. Coles. As a result he began his life-long fascination with health and diet, focusing on natural remedies, preventative medicine, and vegetarianism.
Medical Training
Kellogg planned to become a school teacher, and at the age of 16, he taught for a year in Hastings, Michigan. However, he soon felt the need for more formal training. After finishing high school in Battle Creek, he entered the teacher training program at Michigan State Normal College in Ypsilanti in 1872. In the same year Adventist leaders, who were strongly critical of conventional medicine, became convinced that the church needed professionally trained doctors to affirm their views. Consequently, they chose several promising young Adventists, including Kellogg, to attend a five-month course at Dr. Russell Trall's Hygeio-Therapeutic College in Florence Heights, New Jersey. Although Kellogg rejected Trall's nontraditional medical theories, the experience opened his eyes to a career in the field of medicine and health reform. With encouragement from the Whites, Kellogg pursued a formal degree in medicine. After one year at the University of Michigan Medical School, Kellogg enrolled in Bellevue Hospital Medical College in New York City. He graduated in 1875 and returned to Battle Creek.
The Battle Creek Idea
In 1873 while still a student, Kellogg became James White's chief editorial assistant for Adventist Health Reformer, a monthly publication on health and dietary habits. In the next year Kellogg took over as editor, a position he held for the remainder of his life. Along with publishing articles and editorials in Health Reformer, whose name he changed to Good Health in 1879, Kellogg also began a career as a prolific writer of health propaganda. In 1874 he published a cookbook and Proper Diet for Man, which advocated vegetarianism. Published in 1877, Plain Facts about Sexual Life was the first text to address the topic of sex directly and sold over one half million copies. By the turn of the century, Kellogg, always suspicious of drugs and traditional medicines, developed his theory of hydrotherapy as a superior form of medical treatment. In 1901 he published Rational Hydrotherapy, which became a standard text in the field of medicine for several decades. In all, Kellogg wrote over 50 books and countless articles. He also lectured widely, arguing for the benefit of his health reforms.
Calling his dietary theory the Battle Creek Idea, Kellogg encouraged a diet void of all meat, sparing use of eggs, refined sugar, milk, and cheese, and complete abstinence from alcohol, tea, coffee, tobacco, and chocolate. His total health regimen, which he later termed "biologic living," included regular exercise, lots of fresh air and sunshine, correct posture, sensible clothing, and an intake of eight to ten glasses of water daily. He also came to believe that daily enemas kept the intestines clean and free from disease. According to Ronald M. Deutsch in The New Nuts Among the Berries (1977), "Dr. Kellogg soon added a new dimension to health reform, and one which foreshadowed our own day. For until his entry upon the scene, wearing medical whites - his suit, shirt, tie, shoes, hat, etc., were all white - foodism had been based upon religious and philosophic intuition. Vegetarianism and whole grain advocacies had been born of inspiration. But John Harvey now set out to give these ideas scientific support." He determined that oysters were covered in germs, boullion was basically poisonous, coffee harmed the liver and most likely caused diabetes, and tea was the primary cause of insanity. Thus, based on both scientific and religious reasons, dietary intake should be limited to primarily nuts, grains, legumes, and fruit.
The San
In 1876 Kellogg agreed to take over the Western Health Reform Institute, an Adventist venture founded ten years earlier in Battle Creek to provide natural medical remedies. With only 20 patients, the Institute was about to close its doors when Kellogg took over. After changing the name to the Battle Creek Sanitarium, Kellogg set about to transform the institute into the most famous health retreat of its time. By the turn of the century the Battle Creek Sanitarium, known as The San, had grown to 700 beds. Kellogg enticed some of the most famous and powerful people in the United States to his health institute. In all, over 200,000 patients were treated at The San, including Henry Ford, John D. Rockefeller, Harvey Firestone, J. C. Penney, and C. W. Barron. During his early years at The San he also pursued his interest in surgery, and traveled to Europe several times to study surgical techniques. Over the course of his career, he performed some 22,000 operations, introduced important antishock methods and postoperative exercises to prevent complications, and claimed a record of 165 abdominal surgeries without a fatality. He served on the Michigan State Board of Health from 1878 to 1891 and from 1911 to 1917.
In 1879 Kellogg married Ella Eaton, of Alfred Center, New York. The relationship was much more of a partnership than a marriage. Believing that sex bred evil diseases, especially in men, Kellogg was determined to live a celibate life, and the two maintained separate bedrooms through their marriage. Although they had no children by birth, the Kelloggs were foster parents to 42 children, several of whom they adopted. Because most household chores were attended to by young Adventists in training at The San, Kellogg's wife, who held a college degree in domestic science, was free to spend her time pursuing her interest in dietary experimentation alongside her husband.
Invention of Flaked Cereal
In his efforts to invent a supremely sound and healthy diet, Kellogg developed numerous new food products. In 1877 he created a multigrain biscuit that was then crumbled, called Granola. However, he was later forced to change the name after being sued by Dr. James Caleb who had previously marketed a similar product, Granula. Kellogg also developed such products as peanut butter (so that patients with poor teeth could consume nuts), meat substitutes, and a grain version of coffee. His legendary invention of breakfast cereal came about after he became convinced that indigestion and tooth decay were caused by insufficient chewing. Accordingly, he began requiring his patients to start each meal by slowly and thoroughly chewing a piece of zweibach, a hard German twice-baked bread. When a patient complained that chewing the zweibach broke one of her teeth, Kellogg set about to find a solution. He needed a dry crisp grain product that could be chewed safely. In 1894 in the experimental kitchen, Kellogg, assisted by his younger brother Will Keith who served as The San's business administrator, invented wheat flakes. After accidentally forgetting about a batch of boiled wheat for several days, the brothers pushed the dried dough through rollers and then scraped flakes off the rollers. They discovered that, once baked, the wheat flakes were quite tasty.
Although Kellogg intended to use his new invention for chewing exercises, The San guests soon realized that the wheat flakes were even better with milk. The popularity of the product, known first as Granose and later as Toasted Wheat Flakes, soon spread and in the first year, Kellogg sold over 100,000 pounds of cereal. The brothers later applied the same flaking process to corn and rice. Although highly successful, the Kelloggs were not the first to market dry cereal. In 1893 Henry D. Perky of Denver, Colorado, developed a machine that shredded wheat, which he appropriately named Shredded Wheat. After the success of Toasted Wheat Flakes, numerous imitators flooded the market with new versions of breakfast cereals. Although most failed, some, including former San patient Charles W. Post, created lasting products that competed for the cereal market. Nonetheless, profits from cereal sales along with book sales made Kellogg, who took no salary as superintendent of The San, a wealthy man, and funded the elaborate 20-room home in which the Kelloggs resided. However, as his wealth and popularity grew, Kellogg's difficulties both with his brother Will and Adventist leader Ellen White began to increase.
Conflicts Arise
Will, often known as W. K., Kellogg, never had a very good relationship with his older brother. According to Benjamin Kline Hunnicutt in Kellogg's Six-Hour Day (1996), "Famous for his energy and untiring work, John Harvey cultivated the image of superman, dictating to secretaries for eight hours at a stretch, performing operations through the night, conspicuously working at meals and on trains. John Harvey expected W. K. to live up to this myth, and berated him for being lazy if he stole some time at home." When Post began making millions of dollars through aggressive advertising and free giveaways, W. K. wanted to develop a similar large-scale advertising campaign. When his elder brother said no, W. K. began looking for ways to take control of the company. Because of his notorious frugality, John Harvey had convinced employees to accept lower pay along with stock in the cereal business, now known as the Kellogg Toasted Corn Flake Company. W. K. secured financing from a wealthy St. Louis insurance broker and quietly began buying stock. By 1906, he controlled the company. The exchange led to bitter court battles and bad feelings between the brothers that lasted throughout their lifetimes.
Although he had received strong church support during the first 20 years as superintendent of The San, by 1895 Kellogg was being increasing criticized by White and other Adventist leaders who felt Kellogg had veered away from the church's mission. Having established the health institute as a place for Adventists to regain their health, Adventists objected to Kellogg's admission policy. He accepted only the most elite guests and rejected the common patient or anyone whom he believed was too sick. As he became more interested in the medical reasons why certain foods were bad for one's health, church leaders questioned his faith, since the Adventist diet was determined by the infallible visions of prophetess White, not scientific evidence. There was also concern that Kellogg was hoarding the profits from The San and his cereal ventures to fund medical projects at the expense of evangelical efforts to expand the church.
The San Closed
The tensions peaked in 1907. Kellogg was expelled from the Adventist church, and the Adventist headquarters was moved to Washington, D.C. Although he maintained control of Good Health and The San, he was forced in 1910 to merge the American Medical Missionary College in Chicago, a school he formed in 1895 to propagate biologic medical techniques, with the University of Illinois Medical School. The San continued to prosper throughout the 1920s, accommodating some 1,200 patients during its peak. However, the institute's finances were overextended by a building project in 1927. With the onset of the Great Depression at the beginning of the 1930s, the number of guests at The San was greatly reduced, and by 1938, Kellogg closed the doors to the once famous sanitarium, now $3 million in debt. The inexhaustible Kellogg continued to pursue new projects; however, he developed acute bronchitis in 1942 and died of pneumonia on December 14 of the same year in Battle Creek at the age of 91.
Books
Deutsch, Ronald M. The New Nuts Among the Berries. Bull Publishing, 1977.
Garraty, John A., and Carnes, Mark C. American National Biography, Oxford University Press, 1999.
Hunnicutt, Benjamin Kline. Kellogg's Six-Hour Day. Temple University Press, 1996.
Lender, Mark Edward. Dictionary of American Temperance Biography. Greenwood Press, 1984.
World of Invention. edited by Bridget Travers, Gale Research, Inc., 1994.
Online
"John Harvey Kellogg," Dictionary of American Biography, Supplement 3: 1941-1945. American Council of Learned Societies, 1973. http://www.galenet.com (December 15, 2000).
| Food & Culture Encyclopedia: John Harvey Kellogg |
John Harvey Kellogg (1852–1943) was born in Tyrone, Michigan. When he was four years old, his family moved to Battle Creek, Michigan, where his father was one of the founders of the Western Reform Institute, a Seventh-Day Adventist health clinic specializing in hydrotherapy ("the water cure") and vegetarianism. The Seventh-Day Adventists were the largest American religious denomination to endorse vegetarianism. Kellogg enrolled at Bellevue Hospital College in New York after completing his under-graduate work, where he studied medicine. In 1876, upon completion of his studies, Kellogg took over administration of the Western Reform Institute. He subsequently changed its name to the Sanitarium and enforced a strict vegetarian culinary regimen. Under his guidance, the Sanitarium was visited by America's rich and famous people and Kellogg's beliefs became widely disseminated.
Assisted by his younger brother Will K. Kellogg (1860–1951), John H. Kellogg experimented with rolling, flattening, and baking whole grains. The resulting flakes were a culinary success at the Sanitarium, and the Kelloggs decided to mass-produce and sell them through mail order. Imitators soon sprang up and churned out numerous similar products, including Grape Nuts and Post Toasties developed by C. W. Post, who had been a patient at the Sanitarium. Kellogg's creation had launched the commercial cold cereal industry.
John Harvey Kellogg also rolled other products, such as nuts, thus creating nut butters, which he believed were a substitute for cow's butter. While nut butters were made from all available nuts, peanuts were the least expensive nut. The Kelloggs created the Sanitas Nut Food Company, and again Will was placed in charge. Due in large part to the efforts of the Kellogg brothers, peanut butter quickly became an American favorite.
To develop further the commercial possibilities, the Kelloggs incorporated the Toasted Corn Flake Company in 1906. John H. Kellogg was the majority stockholder, but he distributed part of this stock among the Sanitarium doctors. Will Kellogg bought up the stock until he personally owned the majority of shares. Will promptly put his signature on the box and renamed the company that was ultimately to become Kellogg Co. To enhance sales, Will added sugar and other additives to the recipe and increased sales through advertising not as a health food for the ill, but as an enjoyable and convenient breakfast food for everyone. The two brothers went through years of legal battles over the name, but in the end Will won. For years the brothers never spoke to each other.
Later, John Harvey Kellogg confronted a variety of other problems. About 1906 the Seventh-Day Adventists excommunicated Dr. Kellogg and eventually severed ties with the Sanitarium. However, he survived until the Depression hit, and the Sanitarium began to lose money. It continued in operation until 1942, when it was sold. Kellogg died the following year.
Will Kellogg remained as president of the Kellogg Company until 1929, but remained as chairman of the Board until his death in 1951. In 1930 he established the W. K. Kellogg Foundation in Battle Creek, one of America's foremost philanthropic institutions.
Bibliography
Carson, Gerald. Cornflake Crusade. New York: Rinehart & Company, 1957.
Kellogg, John H. Household Manual. Battle Creek, Mich.: The Office of the Health Reformer, 1877.
Powell, Horace B. The Original Has This Signature—W. K. Kellogg. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1956.
—Andrew F. Smith
| Wikipedia: John Harvey Kellogg |
| John Harvey Kellogg | |
|---|---|
| Born | February 26, 1852 Tyrone, Michigan |
| Died | December 14, 1943 (aged 91) Battle Creek, Michigan |
| Occupation | Physician |
| Known for | Battle Creek Sanitarium |
| Religious beliefs | Seventh-day Adventist (until 1907) |
| Spouse(s) | Ella Ervilla Eaton (1853–1920), married 1879 |
| Children | None biological, 7 adopted |
| Parents | John Preston Kellogg (1806–1881) Ann Janette Stanley (1824–1893) |
| Relatives | Will Keith Kellogg, brother |
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 flakes breakfast cereal with his brother, Will Keith Kellogg.[1]
Contents |
Kellogg was born in Tyrone, Michigan,[2] to John Preston Kellogg (1806–1881) and Ann Janette Stanley (1824–1893). Kellogg lived with two sisters during childhood. By 1860, the family had moved to Battle Creek, Michigan, where his father established a broom factory. John later worked as a printer's devil in a Battle Creek publishing house.
Kellogg attended the Battle Creek public schools, 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 40 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, Newell Carey Kellogg, and Harriett Eleanor Kellogg. Kellogg died in 1943 and was buried in Oak Hill Cemetery, in Battle Creek, Michigan, near James White and Ellen White, his parents, who are buried right next to the White family, C.W. Post, W.K. Kellogg, his brother and his brother's wife, Uriah Smith, and Sojourner Truth.
Kellogg was a Seventh-day Adventist until mid-life and gained fame while being the chief medical officer of the Battle Creek Sanitarium, which was owned and operated by the Seventh-day Adventist Church. The San was run based on the church's health principles. Adventists believe in a vegetarian diet, abstinence from alcohol and tobacco and a regimen of exercise, which Kellogg followed, among other things. He is remembered as an advocate of vegetarianism[3] and wrote in favor of it, including after leaving the Adventist Church.[4] His dietary advice in the late 19th Century, which was in part concerned with reducing sexual stimulation, discouraged meat-eating, but not emphatically so.[5]
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.[citation needed]
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.[6]
Kellogg believed that most disease is alleviated by a change in intestinal flora; that bacteria 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 a poor diet favors harmful bacteria that can then infect other tissues in the body; that the intestinal flora is changed by diet and is generally changed for the better by a well-balanced vegetarian diet favoring 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.[7] Although generally against unnecessary surgery to treat diseases,[8][9][dead link] he did advocate circumcision, allegedly to prevent masturbation.
He had many notable patients, such as former president William Howard Taft, composer and pianist Percy Grainger, arctic explorers Vilhjalmur Stefansson and Roald Amundsen, world travellers Richard Halliburton and Lowell Thomas, aviator Amelia Earhart, economist Irving Fisher, Nobel prize winning playwright George Bernard Shaw, actor and athlete Johnny Weissmuller, founder of the Ford Motor Company Henry Ford, inventor Thomas Edison, and famous actress Sarah Bernhardt.[10] [11]
John Kellogg and his brother Will Keith Kellogg started the Sanitas Food Company to produce their whole grain cereals around 1897, a time when the standard breakfast for the wealthy 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, the Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flake Company, which eventually became the Kellogg Company, triggering a decades-long feud. John then formed the Battle Creek Food Company to develop and market soy products.
The Kelloggs 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, Post Cereals, selling a rival brand of corn flakes. Dr. Kellogg later would claim that Charles Post stole the formula for corn flakes from his safe in the Sanitarium office.
As an advocate of sexual abstinence, Kellogg devoted large amounts of his educational and medical work to discouraging sexual activity, on the basis of dangers both scientifically based at the time - as in sexually transmissible diseases - and those taught by the Seventh-day Adventist Church through the writings of Ellen White.[12][13][14][15] He set out his views on such matters in one of his larger books, published in various editions around the turn of the 20th century under the title Plain Facts about Sexual Life and later Plain Facts for Old and Young.[5] Some of his work on diet was influenced by his belief that a plain and healthy diet, with only two meals a day, among other things, would reduce sexual feelings. Those experiencing temptation were to avoid stimulating food and drinks, and eat very little meat, if any. Kellogg also advocated hydrotherapy and stressed the importance of keeping the colon clean through yogurt enemas.[16][17]
He warned that many types of sexual activity, including many "excesses" that couples could be guilty of within marriage, were against nature, and therefore, extremely unhealthy. He drew on the warnings of William Acton and expressed support for the work of Anthony Comstock. He appears to have followed his own advice, since, although he and his wife were married for over 40 years, they likely never had sexual intercourse and maintained separate bedrooms throughout. It has been suggested he worked on Plain Facts on their honeymoon.[18]
He was an especially zealous campaigner against masturbation; this was an orthodox view during his lifetime, especially the earlier part. Kellogg was able to draw upon many medical sources' claims such as "neither the plague, nor war, nor small-pox, nor similar diseases, have produced results so disastrous to humanity as the pernicious habit of onanism," credited to one Dr. Adam Clarke. Kellogg strongly warned against the habit in his own words, claiming of masturbation-related deaths "such a victim literally dies by his own hand," among other condemnations. 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, insanity, and mental and physical debility – "dimness of vision" was only briefly mentioned.
Kellogg worked on the rehabilitation of masturbators, often employing extreme measures, even mutilation, on both sexes. He was an advocate of circumcising young boys to curb masturbation and applying phenol (carbolic acid) to a young woman's clitoris. In his Plain Facts for Old and Young,[5] he wrote
| “ | A remedy which is almost always successful in small boys is circumcision, especially when there is any degree of phimosis. The operation should be performed by a surgeon without administering an anesthetic, as the brief pain attending the operation will have a salutary effect upon the mind, especially if it be connected with the idea of punishment, as it may well be in some cases. The soreness which continues for several weeks interrupts the practice, and if it had not previously become too firmly fixed, it may be forgotten and not resumed. | ” |
and
| “ | In females, the author has found the application of pure carbolic acid [phenol] to the clitoris an excellent means of allaying the abnormal excitement. | ” |
He also recommended, to prevent children from this "solitary vice", bandaging or tying their hands, covering their genitals with patented cages, sewing the foreskin shut and electrical shock.[5]
Kellogg would live for over sixty years after writing Plain Facts. Whether he continued to teach the "facts" in it is not entirely clear, although it appears from the later books he wrote that he moved away from this subject matter. One source, taking a positive view of his nutritional and anti-smoking work, suggests he "dropped his obsession with the evils of sex" around 1920,[19] which would be consistent with the last edition of Plain Facts being apparently published in 1917,[20] but another, highly critical source maintains he "never retracted his claims."[21] He did continue to work on healthy eating advice and run the sanitarium, although this was hit by the Great Depression and had to be sold. He ran another institute in Florida, which was popular throughout the rest of his life,[22] although it was a distinct step down from his Battle Creek institute.[23][24]
Kellogg was outspoken on his beliefs on race and segregation, in spite of the fact that he himself adopted a number of black children. 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. Also, Kellogg gave a large portion of the common stock of the Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flake Company to the Race Betterment Foundation. Whether any of that stock has been converted into Kellogg Company stock is unknown.[25]
Kellogg had a long personal and business split with his brother after fighting in court for the rights to cereal recipes. The Foundation for Economic Education records that the nonagenarian J.H.K. prepared a letter seeking to reopen the relationship, but that his secretary decided her employer had demeaned himself in it and refused to send it. The younger Kellogg did not see it until after his brother's death.[24]
This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)
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