Page 8 - Pharmacy History 29 July 2006

The road to Wellville – The Kellogg story
By Dennis B Worthen, PhD, Lloyd Library and Museum Cincinnati, Ohio, USA
Suggestions on the mode of preserving health and attaining old age:
Perfect nutrition is essential. The process of digestion must be completely and perfectly accomplished.
Great attention must be paid to the habitual condition of the organs of excretion – particularly the bowels and the skin.
Healthful habits and remedies from a cIentury ago
n the late 1800s, there was great interest in the general subjects of health and wellness, which
were then known as ‘hygiene.’ Health fads of the time included phrenology and palmistry. Practitioners of those pseudo-sciences claimed that they could understand a patient’s disease and personality by studying the shape of his or her head or the length of the heart line. It was the period during which cures and restorative powers were attributed to electrotherapy, mechanotherapy, hydrotherapy, and
a host of other therapies. Food was seen as both the cause and the cure for the ills of the day.
This period also marked the beginning of an industry devoted to popular ‘how-to’ health manuals and health fads that continued well into the next century and into the present.
From the public’s perspective, such printed materials and ideas were welcome.
The causes of many diseases were poorly understood, and the health system offered little to combat
or explain debility and chronic disease. Infectious illnesses such
as tuberculosis, pneumonia, and venereal diseases continued to be major causes of death. Even many of those in the increasing middle class could not afford a doctor and his treatments.
Leaders of the
wellness movement
The names of three individuals involved with the dietary movement (Samuel Graham, John Harvey Kellogg, MD, and CW Post) were memorialised and became part of the vernacular.
Samuel Graham (1794-1851) was a minister, reformer, and avid vegetarian who took on causes ranging from the dangers of feather beds and corsets to white bread and pork.
He was most renowned, however, for his theories on the association of diet and masturbation and advanced the theory that diet influenced sexuality. He championed the use of coarsely ground wheat flour (quickly named ‘Graham flour’), which became the basic ingredient in ‘Graham crackers’.
John Harvey Kellogg, MD, (1852- 1943) was a physician and vegetarian who transformed a struggling Seventh Day Adventists’ home in Battle Creek, Michigan, into the major sanitarium (as distinct from a sanitorium) of the day.
Battle Creek
Sanitarium
Dr JH Kellogg was also an inventor: He is said to have developed the electric blanket. In addition, he devised cold cereals as breakfast food for his patients at the Battle Creek Sanitarium.
His brother, William Keith Kellogg, commercialised one flaked cold cereal as Kellogg’s Corn Flakes.
In 1930 at the height of the Depression in the US, Kellogg
8 ■ Pharmacy History Australia
volume 3 ■ no 30 ■ NOVEMBER 2006
Battle Creek Sanitarium