Instead of starting with some sort of insightful introduction, I’m going to start this newsletter with a photo because once you have seen the man who invented cornflakes, you can never unsee it. Look at this man:
Here he is on a bicycle.
And here he is communing with a bird.
Ok, now that we’re all on the same page, let’s talk about Dr. John Kellogg, (1852 - 1943, yes he lived to be 91 years old). If you know nothing else about Dr. Kellogg, you probably know about the cornflakes thing (I promise we’ll get more into that) and the fact that he started a sanitarium. You also now know that had an unrivaled mustache/goatee combo that seems to be the influence for Colonel Sanders (ironic because Kellog was plant-based). He also believed that, with proper diet and lifestyle choices, he could cure anything (mental or physical) and everything except racism because he was actually pretty into racism. Phew!
Dr. Kellogg adhered to what he called the “living temple” doctrine, which is exactly what it sounds like - the body is a temple and if you don’t care for it properly (his way), you’ll have mental and physical unrest. This sounds pretty woo-woo by modern standards, but it was actually rooted in his pretty serious Seventh-Day Adventist faith. Writing for an SDA conference in 1897, he stated that “all true science leads to harmony with, and obedience to God.”
In fact, Kellogg’s whole deal was that respecting the body - and the mind - was the important work of a Christian because it was one of the primary ways to thank the Lord for providing us with our earthly vessel.
“The Creator of man has arranged the living machinery of our bodies. Every function is wonderfully and wisely-made. And God has pledged himself to keep this machinery in healthful action; if the human agent will obey his laws, and co-operate with God. Every law governing the human machinery is to be considered just as truly divine in origin, in character, and in importance, as the Word of God.
Every careless, inattentive action, any abuse put upon the Lord's wonderful mechanism, by disregarding his specified laws in the human habitation, is a violation of God's law. We may behold and admire the work of God in the natural world, but the human habitation is the most wonderful.”
So how does that get us to crunching on dry-ass cereal at a sanitarium? Easily! Because it was from this religious conviction of bodily purity that Kellogg determined his treatments. And some of them were real strange!
Dr. Kellogg and the Never-Ending Enema
Not one to shy away from a challenge, Kellogg set out to cure the endemic destruction of the human race. As he described in his book, The Living Temple, humans were decreasing in vigor and health and “insanity, epilepsy, and imbecility” had increased 300% (no citation there). A big reason, he believed, was the departure from the “natural” way of life.
This was a pretty common thing to wring one’s hands over at the turn of the 20th century. Industrialization had lead to crowded American cities, unsafe, unsanitary jobs that treated workers like disposable commodities, and the memory of the 1893 depression was still very clear in the minds of regular folks. Mental health was pretty shaky for a lot of Americans because they weren’t able to do almost anything to tend to their own psyches and anyway, Ye Olde Protestant Work Ethic had everyone believing that if they didn’t absolutely simp for the boss and appreciate every moment of bone-crushing labor, there was something wrong with them.
Instead of blaming the transmission of new diseases on, you know, capitalism and a lack of clean municipal water, many looked to the Bible for a “simpler” life. That was Kellogg’s whole deal, especially around nutrition. Which isn’t entirely surprising since Upton Sinclair’s explosive treatise on food taint, The Jungle, came out right around this time in 1906 and included blistering passages like:
There would be meat stored in great piles in rooms; and the water from leaky roofs would drip over it, and thousands of rats would race about on it. It was too dark in these storage places to see well, but a man could run his hand over these piles of meat and sweep off handfuls of the dried dung of rats.
These rats were nuisances, and the packers would put poisoned bread out for them; they would die, and then rats, bread, and meat would go into the hoppers together. This is no fairy story and no joke; the meat would be shoveled into carts, and the man who did the shoveling would not trouble to lift out a rat even when he saw one—there were things that went into the sausage in comparison with which a poisoned rat was a tidbit.
So. You could see how mental health was fragile and fantasies about a more ~pastoral~ life with fresh food and fresh air and fresh water would sound like the cure for what ails a person.
The Battle Creek Sanitarium, then, became a little piece of heaven for those escaping city life. But what started as a little church project (basically a nice getaway) grew and expanded, ultimately (after a fire and a lot of building and rebuilding) a massive compound where people could come and seek Health.
But it wasn’t all crispy bits of bland food - which Kellogg kind of accidentally invented when he was trying to make some sort of bread but overbaked them and created little human-grade kibble - and lots of deep breaths. Folks staying at the San, as it was called, were required to keep a strict vegetarian diet, abstain from sexual activity, exercise a lot, and take part in various therapies that Kellogg had come up with. These included:
Baths (often really long ones) in cold water, in hot water, in salted water, with the help of electrical currents (how that doesn’t kill you, I have no idea), and a lot of other variables. Kellogg really loved baths.
Light therapies that included lights you look at, lights that bathe you, no lights, and light pulsing.
Small electrical currents applied to your sinuses (!!!!)
And enemas. The dude absolutely loved enemas and believed that a person’s guts needed to be “washed out.” This wasn’t really that rare, though - it was the entire basis of Dr. Linda Hazzard’s starvation “cures” (murders) out west.
And yes, it was billed as “a vacation.”
Because Kellogg was a staunch Christian, he often cited sin as the cause of any and all health issues As a result, he used a lot of these treatments not just just as a nice thing for the patient, but as a kind of punishment to drill the bad stuff out of them. This was especially true with regard to conditions of the mental or cognitive variety.
“That solitary vice is one of the most common causes of insanity, is a fact too well established to need demonstration here,” he wrote in another of this books, Plain Facts for Old and Young. “Every lunatic asylum furnishes numerous illustrations of the fact.”
Now, you may be wondering what sort of sin he’s thinking of. And let me tell you: It was almost always what Kellogg called “self-abused.” Yes, Dr. Kellogg believed that masturbation was not only a huge affront to the Lord, but that it would render a person entirely insane.
And here’s where it gets weird, y’all!
After having duly considered the causes and effects of this terrible evil, the question next in order for consideration is, How shall it be cured? When a person has, through ignorance or weakness, brought upon himself the terrible effects described, how shall he find relief from his ills, if restoration is possible? To the answer of these inquiries, most of the remaining pages of this work will be devoted. But before entering upon a description of methods of cure, a brief consideration of the subject of prevention of the habit will be in order.
Kellogg had a whole list of ways to keep people’s hands out of their pants, including early childhood intervention (“admonishing them for their sinfulnesss, and portraying in vivid colors its terrible results”), physical barriers (“covering the organs with a cage”!!!!!!!), and trying to make life as dull as possible by keeping an “unstimulating diet.”
“A man that lives on pork, fine-flour bread, rich pies and cakes, and condiments, drinks tea and coffee and uses tobacco, might as well try to fly as to be chaste in thought,” Kellog wrote.
And in case you were wondering what, exactly, are “stimulating” food and drinks, Kellogg made a list:
Foods: Spices, pepper, ginger, mustard, cinnamon, cloves, essences, all condiments, salt, pickles, etc., together with animal food of all kinds, not excepting fish, fowl, oysters, eggs, and milk.
Beverages: Wine, beer, tea, and coffee should be taken under no circumstances. The influence of coffee in stimulating the genital organs is notorious. Chocolate should be discarded also. It is recommended by some who suppose it to be harmless, being ignorant of the fact that it contains a poison practically identical with that of tea and coffee.
Again, this was meant to be a vacation that also got you totally healthy and sane.
“Self abuse” could also, Kellogg warned, leave a person sterile. Which, honestly, he was into because he believed that people with diseases he deemed incurable (like insanity as brought on by pleasuring oneself) should not be allowed to have children.
Enter: The Eugenics part of the program.
“A Source of Crime”
Kellogg was pretty unabashed when it came to his belief in keeping “unsavory” individuals from procreating. And while he was anti-abortion (“the mother is doomed to a life of suffering, of misery, if she survives the shock of the terrible outrage against her nature”), he also didn’t want ~the wrong types~ to have babies, either. So what’s a pious Christian to do? Preach abstinence, of course. Because otherwise, the streets will be overrun with Bad People.
Who can tell how many of the liars, thieves, drunkards, murderers, and prostitutes of our day are less responsible for their crimes against themselves, against society, and against Heaven, than those who were instrumental in bringing them into the world? Almost every village has its boy "who was born drunk," a staggering, simpering, idiotic representative of a drunken father, beastly intoxicated at the very moment when he should have been most sober.
Just to recap: No self-pleasuring. No sex, even inside of marriage, unless you’re planning to have a baby. No abortion. Certainly no sex work. So like, just…don’t? Have? A sex drive?
EXACTLY. And that’s where the cornflakes come in!
“So much has already been said upon the relation of diet to chastity and its influence upon the sexual organs that it is unnecessary to add many remarks here,” he wrote. “Nothing could be more untrue than the statement made by some authors that the nature of the diet is of no consequence.”
The invention of cornflakes was literally an accident that occurred while Kellogg was trying to create a new, ultra-unstimulating food product that could nourish a person just enough to stay physically alive but prevent them from feeling anything emotionally. Cornflakes were born of a need to completely tamp down the human libido.
Unfortunately for Dr. Kellogg (and fortunately for literally every other human alive), we’ve since decoupled “stimulating foods” like (checks notes) salt from reproduction. This is especially good news for white Fundamentalists who are managing to get married and have 13 children despite never meeting a seasoning that they trusted!
Jokes!
Anyway, this doesn’t mean you have to forever bail on your favorite Kellogg’s cereals. This man and his while suit and his weird hatred of sex is long dead and I’m pretty sure the company is under some giant corporate umbrella anyway.
But I do always laugh a tiny bit when I see cornflakes at the grocery store because I imagine couples who are trying to remain ~chaste~ purchasing the giant box and then putting it in between them when they go out to the movies or whatever like a chastity barrier. Or a chaperone. Thanks, Dr. Kellogg!