Page 9 - Pharmacy History 29 July 2006

WK Kellogg
implemented a six-hour day in his colossal cereal factory as a stratagem to alleviate unemployment in Battle Creek.
Charles William Post (1854-1914),
an inventor and businessman, was a patient at the Kellogg sanitarium. He viewed cereals and coffee substitutes as health products and promoted them via consumer advertising. He developed the dried cereal Grape Nuts which he claimed was a ‘brain food’ that could also cure tuberculosis. He was also the developer of Postum, a cereal-based coffee substitute.
Each of those men believed that health could be achieved and maintained only through the proper use of food and the equally important issue of elimination.
Dr Kellogg was particularly given
to the use of enemas to cleanse
the bowels. He cautioned against
the habitual use of laxatives and believed that laxative abuse increased constipation instead of curing it.
As a remedy for dry, hard stool, he recommended the use of ‘Neptune’s girdle’; or ‘wet abdomen’. That process included the bed-time routine of placing, on the patient’s abdomen,
a towel that had been soaked in cold water, wrung out, and covered with dry flannel. The patient was then wrapped in the flannel covered towel, which provided warmth overnight. The towel was removed the next morning, and the patient
was instructed to ‘dip the hand in cold water and percuss the bowels very thoroughly for five minutes. Go to stool within a half hour after breakfast. Have a regular time.’
In TC Boyle’s novel The Road to Wellville, one of the characters is introduced to the Battle Creek Sanitarium, where bowel health and hygiene are emphasised:
‘We’re going to start you out for the
first three days on psyllium seeds and hijiki (a type of Japanese seaweed).
The psyllium is hygroscopic, it absorbs water and will expand in your stomach, scouring you out as it passes through
you just as surely as if a tiny army of janitors were down there equipped with tiny scrub brushes. The same with the hijiki – perfectly indigestible. Like eating a broom –- but that broom –- will sweep you clean.
Other physicians used a broad range of medicines to cause evacuation
of the bowels. Those remedies were divided into five groups according to the action and thoroughness desired. Laxatives provided the gentlest action. Mild cathartics were used for thorough bowel cleansing without irritation. Cholagogue cathartics acted on the liver by increasing bile secretion. Hydragogue cathartics produced large volumes of watery discharge, and irritant cathartics produced a vigorous evacuation of the bowels.
Illness and the
intellect
Not all the theories regarding health and wellness focused exclusively on the digestive tract. Arnold Lorand explored geriatrics, including the possible postponement of aging
by practicing hygienic measures.
In his book, Old Age Deferred, he offered advice to ‘brainworkers’ (something of particular interest to pharmacists, teachers, and writers). He commented on the physical appearance of those who earned
their living by intellectual pursuits. They, he theorised, were subject to chronic constipation and nervous and intestinal disorders because blood
was diverted from the digestive tract to the brain during intellectual activities.
His solution was that:
‘Intellectual activity should, if possible, be suspended a full hour before and after meals. Congestion of the brain likewise interferes with proper sleep, which, as a rule, can only become
truly deep when the brain is blood-less. Intellectual efforts should therefore be avoided for a period of one to two hours before going to bed, and especially one should not read in bed.’6
World Wide Corporate Social Responsibility Policy
In June 1930, in his twilight years, Will Keith Kellogg founded the
WK Kellogg Foundation and in 1934, Kellogg donated more than $66 million in Kellogg Company stock and other investments to the WK Kellogg Trust. As with other endowments, the yearly income from this trust funds the Foundation.
The Foundation continues to hold substantial equity in and enjoy a strong relationship with the Kellogg Company, both of which are based in Battle Creek, Michigan. It is governed by an independent board of trustees. The foundation is now the seventh largest philanthropic foundation in the US. In 2005, the foundation reported that the total assets of the foundation and its trust were US$7.3 billion; about US$5.5 billion of this was in Kellogg Company stock. The foundation funded US$243 million in grants and programs in its 2005 fiscal year. 82% of this was spent
in the US; 9% in southern Africa; and 9% in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Its activities also extend to Australia with grants and scholarships to individuals and organisations such as the National Heart Foundation. Back in the 1890s, because of the success in America of the breakfast cereal and related health food products associated with the Kellogg brand, the elders of the Seventh Day Adventist Church in Australia, began discussions with their US colleagues about the process of forming a health food company in this country.
To help the company get started, a baker by the name of Edward Halsey,
volume 3 ■ no 30 ■ NOVEMBER 2006
Pharmacy History Australia ■ 9