Seen as a ‘posh’ medical retreat, The San enjoyed a number of famous patients, including playwright George Bernard Shaw, industrialist Henry Ford, wealthy businessman John D. Rockefeller, owner of the Wall Street Journal C.W. Baron and even a visit in 1927 from famed Olympic swimmer Johnny Weissmuller. Kellogg made good use of Weissmuller’s visit and used him to create shadow-grams that would display his vision of the ideal human physique. Dr Kellogg got Weissmuller to follow a vegetarian diet while he was there and he actually broke one of his own records in the pools at The San pool, lending further legitimacy to Kellogg’s programme.
John Harvey brought his younger brother, William Keith Kellogg, into the Battle Creek Sanitarium to help keep the books and run much of the business end, so he could fully focus on his health ideas and ambitions for The San. William had just recently completed a four-month business course and was the perfect candidate to help John Harvey, because he never really challenged his absolute authority. If you were to work at The San, then you could expect a salary of up to $9 per week. The first-year nurses were treated to room and board, but no salary. This wasn’t an uncommon practice in the nineteenth century. Dr Kellogg felt the honour of working under him was enough compensation. John Harvey boasted that he himself took no salary, assumingly a testament to his dedication to the healthy cause, but the reality is that his speeches and books alone made him wealthy. Employees were also required to forego meat. This isn’t a surprising requirement from the author of Shall We Slay To Eat? Kellogg believed that meat was the cause of many illnesses.
Kellogg was so serious about the health benefits of committing to a life of vegetarianism that he not only required it of his staff, but also of all guests of The San. Often, the patients were unable to commit fully to the programme and snuck away to indulge themselves and eat meat at a nearby restaurant. Dr Kellogg was apparently aware that this would occur and it frustrated him endlessly. The menus at The San included carefully chosen selections such as creamed cauliflower, celery, radishes, yogurt, cheese, stewed raisins, apple pie, bananas, good health biscuits, pineapple sauce and kaffir tea. No salt and sugar were offered as they were considered to be unnecessary and impure.
The daily menu would be printed at the Sanitarium and would include the programme for that day. Here is an example of one such programme, this specific one from 16 November 1927:
7.00 AM Gymnasium – Chest Gymnasics
7.20 AM Parlor – Morning Worship
7.40 to 8.40 AM Breakfast
8.30 to 9.00 AM Gymnasium – Special Class for Women, Folk Dances, etc.
9.00 to 9.30 AM Gymnasium – Drill and March for Men and Women
9.30 to 10.00 AM Gymnasium – Games, Baseball, etc., for men
12.45 to 2.00 PM Dinner
2.00 to 3.00 PM Lobby – Orchestra Concert
3.00 to 4.00 PM Gymnasium – Games, Medical Gymnastics, Volley Ball, etc.
6.00 to 6.45 PM Supper
7.00 PM Gymnasium – Light Gymnastics and Grand March with Music
8.00 PM Parlour – Lecture, Dr W. H. Riley
Kellogg continued to explore his distrust of the human colon by attempting to prove that constipation was a problem that only humans experienced and that it was somehow tied to their consumption of meat. He travelled widely to study animals and found that vegetarian animals would experience frequent bowel movements, so he decided that he would help his human patients to experience the same. Dr Kellogg created the Colonic Irrigation Machine to deal with this problem, which would wash out the digestive tract of the patient with warm water. It was Kellogg’s commitment to changing the diets of his patients that would soon lead to him working to develop his own food alternatives.
Kellogg had all kinds of ideas about not just diet, but also human sexuality, marriage, and life. In 1879, he married Ella Ervilla Eaton; it is said that he enjoyed her intelligence, which is what attracted him to her. He boasted that he and his wife never consummated their marriage, in fact he spent their honeymoon writing a book. Kellogg and his wife would never have biological children of their own; instead they adopted over forty children from all around the world.
There were certainly medical theories in Dr Kellogg’s writing that were profound and ahead of their time, but we are also forced to acknowledge a high level of the absurd in many of the assertions he put forth. Kellogg was convinced, for example, that marriage had a physical affect on a woman. If a woman had children with her second husband, Kellogg asserted that they would more closely resemble the first husband, rather than their biological father. He also believed that if a black woman had a baby with a white man, that all of her subsequent babies would be lighter in skin tone, even if their biological father was a black male. Kellogg also had strong feelings about who should and should not be able to marry; he believed, for example, that a criminal should never marry, neither should someone who is disproportionate in size, has a gap in age between the husband and wife and, to top it all off, he was also against interracial marriage.
The evils of sex also extended to the world of dance. Dr Kellogg was certain that ‘round dances’, like the Waltz, would lead to rampant immorality, such as late hours, fashionable dressing, midnight feats and improper dress. These violations of morality were something that he was utterly convinced would cause injury to the body, mind, and spirit.
It was Kellogg’s views on sexuality, abstinence, and the evils of masturbation that would linger as his most ardent and resounding notions. The recurring theme in all of Kellogg’s beliefs is purity and uncleanliness, both physical and mental. He would refer to the very notion of mental sexual arousal and the indulgence of those ‘impure thoughts’, as leading down the path of an ‘immoral life’ full of ‘vicious habits’. Kellogg was so adamant about the evils of masturbation that one of his ‘treatments’ at The San included applying carbolic acid to the clitoris of female patients, and electro-shock to prevent the harmful practice of masturbation.
The evils of masturbation, or the ‘solitary vice’, were written about extensively by Dr Kellogg in his book Plain Facts For Old And Young:
If illicit commerce of the sexes is a heinous sin, self-pollution, or masturbation, is a crime doubly abominable. As a sin against nature, it has no parallel except in sodomy (see Gen. 19:5; Judges 19:22). It is the most dangerous of all sexual abuses because the most extensively practised. The vice consists in an excitement of the genital organs produced otherwise than in the natural way. It is known by the terms, self-pollution, self-abuse, masturbation, onanism, manustupration, voluntary pollution, and solitary or secret vice. The vice is the more extensive because there are almost no bounds to its indulgence. Its frequent repetition fastens it upon the victim with a fascination almost irresistible! It may be begun in earliest infancy, and may continue through life.
A lot of the good doctor’s passions regarding the evils of masturbation quickly gave way to embellishments and obvious fear tactics. A great example of this is seen when he goes on in his book to discuss a specific case of a young boy who was inflicted with the unclean habit:
Unsuspected Rottenness. — Parents who have no suspicion of the evil, who think their children the embodiment of purity, will find by careful observation and inquiry, — though personal testimony cannot be relied upon, — that in many instances their supposed virtuous children are old in corruption. Such a revelation has brought dismay into many a family, in some cases only too late.