The Kelloggs Page 12
Puss Davis and Will Kellogg, 1880 Credit 26
When it came to religion, Will was never as devout or enthusiastic about Adventism as his brother or parents, even at this early point in his life. He rarely went to church, except for weddings and funerals. During the early years of their marriage, he and Puss kept the Saturday Sabbath, and restricted themselves to a vegetarian and grain diet. As time passed, Ella began to serve meat and fowl for dinner and, soon enough, Will openly consumed oysters, much to his brother’s disgust.81 For most of his life, Will eschewed the verboten sugar, coffee, and tea, and instead preferred drinking tall glasses of buttermilk. He was, however, known to occasionally satisfy his sweet tooth with a spoonful of clover honey and, on especially indulgent moments, a chocolate soda or, better still, a chocolate bar.82
Yet every night before retiring, Will recited the Lord’s Prayer followed by a request to remain humble and “blessings and security” for his family’s health and welfare. His longtime friend, the Adventist minister and religious radio show broadcaster H. M. S. Richards, insisted that Will “believed in prayer, in God, and in Christ. He had a very complete knowledge of the Bible and of the intricate prophecies uncomprehended by many persons.”83 Late in his life, there were moments where Will questioned his faith, such as when he asked the Nobel Prize–winning physicist Robert Millikan, “In your study of science, do you not feel there is a pattern or a guiding force?” Millikan is said to have replied, “There is no other answer.”84 As the historian Brian Wilson noted, “It might be better said that business, and then philanthropy, became the younger Kellogg’s true religion.”85
Will made his third and most momentous life decision by seeking a stable job near his home. The biggest industry in town was his older brother’s transformation of the Western Health Reform Institute into the Battle Creek Sanitarium. John had enough on his hands in creating this medical mecca and desperately needed someone he could both dominate and trust to put the enterprise on a sound business basis. That someone was the twenty-year-old Will K. Kellogg. In April 1880, John hired Will as manager of his publishing and food businesses at a salary of $9 (about $215 in 2016) a week, with the veiled promise for steady and equitable advancement at the San. Although the arrangement did not turn out to be nearly as equitable as Will would have liked, the Kellogg brothers were about to begin a nearly twenty-five-year adventure of medical conquest and destructive fraternal battle, all in the name of Health.
PART II
An Empire of Wellness
The cover of Dr. Kellogg’s monthly magazine, Good Health, February 1917—“The Best Remedy for ‘the Blues’ ” Credit 27
5
Building the San
IN THE LATE SUMMER OF 1876, John walked into New York City’s cavernous Grand Central Terminal and bought a train ticket that would take him home to Battle Creek. Soon after making his purchase, he boarded “the fastest train on the American continent,” Cornelius Vanderbilt’s New York Central Line Limited. The locomotive was a sleek, all parlor and sleeper car train that traveled at 35 or more miles per hour along “the only 4 track railroad in the world all laid with steel rails.”
John could not afford the added price of a sleeping berth so he was forced to sit upright in the parlor car for much of the twenty-two-hour ride (including multiple stops along the way). To counteract any physical discomfort, he got out of his seat every hour or so to stretch his short, powerful legs and walk up and down the long line of passenger cars. The only two cars he did not enter were the smoking car, constantly blue with cigar and pipe fumes, and the dining car, where for a hefty fee the famous Vanderbilt fare was served to passengers. Smoking, of course, was not an option and whenever John grew hungry, he pulled into his coat pocket for a handy traveling meal of his own design: apples, Graham flour gems, and a bag of assorted nuts—cashews (his favorite), pecans, walnuts, and peanuts.
John sped through Albany and west to Buffalo, reading, writing, and thinking about the medical practice he was about to launch. From upstate New York, the train chugged along the southern border of Lake Erie and through Cleveland on a virtually flat “water level route,” which made the ride far more comfortable than other trains restricted to mountainous or hilly railways. The locomotive ultimately merged onto the tracks of the Michigan Central line. During a brief stopover at the Detroit station, John quickly ducked out of the train to purchase a pack of the local newspapers for distraction and to calm his excitement as the train carried him the remaining 123 miles west and home to Battle Creek.1
Young Dr. Kellogg (age 24), circa 1876 Credit 28
Years later, John recalled a conversation he had with a Battle Creek medical colleague, soon after his return home from New York, about the wisdom of establishing a practice in the sleepy little town. The other doctor beseeched John to join him in search of bigger and better opportunities. “Dr. Kellogg,” the medico announced, “I am going to leave to-morrow for Washington. Battle Creek is only a small country town and I will never amount to much if I stay here. Why don’t you go to New York or Chicago where you can really make a name for yourself? You will be buried here and never have the opportunity to do great things.” Dr. Kellogg replied, “I am not interested in making a name for myself. But I want to be of human service. I think I can be of more service in Battle Creek than anywhere else, so I will remain here. I think you are making a mistake in going away. You have my best wishes for your success.”2
Beyond the desire to be of “human service,” there was his debt to Ellen and James White, the patrons of his superb medical education. Mrs. White began promoting health as a major part of her ministry as early as June 6, 1863. At a Friday evening Sabbath welcoming service in Otsego, Michigan, she reported a forty-five-minute vision she had on “the great subject of Health Reform.”3 Over the next few years, she developed a doctrine on hygiene, diet, and chastity enveloped within the teachings of Christ. Her canon of health found even greater clarity while preaching on Christmas Eve 1865 in Rochester, New York. There, Ellen vividly described a vision in which God emphasized the importance of a life in harmony with dietary and lifestyle principles designed to stay well and prevent disease.4 The following spring, on May 20, 1866, “Sister” White formally presented her ideas to the 3,500 Adventists comprising the denomination’s governing body, or General Conference. She was so convincing that the members unanimously voted to create an institute of health reform. It was at this moment that the Battle Creek Sanitarium was born and, to a large extent, John’s concept of disease prevention and “wellness.”5
The original Western Health Reform Institute, circa 1867 Credit 29
One of Ellen’s most enthusiastic supporters in this endeavor was the broom maker John Preston Kellogg. In August of 1866, John Preston spearheaded a call for contributions. Each donor, he suggested, would “purchase” stock in the proposed health reform institute. Although every “investor” was accorded a vote in determining the institute’s progress, it was understood that the capital and accrued dividends were charitable gifts to the Church and would be reinvested for the institute’s future growth.
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THE ORIGINAL “articles of incorporation” for the Western Health Reform Institute of Battle Creek, Michigan, restricted membership only to those who kept “the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus Christ,” an expression that Adventists typically used to describe themselves during this period. Its stockholders openly declared their allegiance to the wisdom and counsel of Ellen White and their meetings were held as part of the denomination’s annual General Conference during the summer Michigan camp gathering. The Western’s founders fully intended the institute to be a center of natural healing methods based upon Christian, and more specifically Adventist, religious principles.6 After signing the incorporation documents, John Preston announced his gift of $500 (or $7,690 in 2016). To those still sitting on their hands and worrying about the burden of maintaining such an ambitious enterprise, John Preston declared, “This is what I think o
f it. The $500 is a seed to start the institution, sink or swim.”7
The Western Health Reform Institute officially opened its doors for business on September 5, 1867. Situated on an eight-acre plot of land west of the town’s main streets, the original facility was a two-story wooden structure, attached to an old home donated by one of the church members. During the first decade of its existence, fewer than two thousand patients (or a monthly census of about sixteen) were treated there. The patient rooms were sparsely furnished, dank with mold, heated with temperamental wood-burning stoves, and lit by flickering oil lamps. The doctors there emphasized the healing powers of water, and the therapeutic action occurred in three treatment rooms outfitted with wooden bathtubs. Water was provided by a windmill that pumped water from the Kalamazoo River into an elevated water tank, which supplied patients with thrice-daily baths, water sprays, and wet pack treatments. When there was little wind or a drought in the creek, water became scarce and the reuse of bath water between patients was poorly tolerated. One “garrulous old lady” went as far as to complain, “We are all being dipped in the same gravy.”8
The medical staff doctors at the Western Institute were neither distinguished nor friendly. For example, Ellen described one of them, “Doctor B,” as rude, easily discouraged, overly sensitive, and prone to displaying a “quick impulsive temper.”9 The patients tended to ignore the doctors’ sanctimonious lectures on disease and prescriptions of rigorous exercise.10 Others rebelled at orders to wear loose-fitting suits and dresses so as not to impede drawing in breath or intestinal movements necessary for the proper digestion of food. Entertainment was hard to come by, especially after the medical staff banned them from playing checkers or engaging in levity of any kind. Perhaps the worst part of staying at the Western Institute was the food. Three times a day, the kitchen staff served up bland and mushy mixtures of boiled grains, roasted nuts, and stewed fruits. All of these problems resulted in few people willing to spend their money recuperating in Battle Creek. Those who visited rarely returned. By 1869, the institute’s debts added up to more than $13,000 (about $233,000 in 2016), leading Ellen White to observe: “It was at this discouraging point that my husband decided in his mind that the Institute property must be sold to pay the debts, and the balance, after the payment of the debts, be refunded to the stockholders in proportion to the amount of the stock each held.”11
As a last effort before closing the place down, James White asked the business-minded John Preston Kellogg to put it on a firmer financial footing. John Preston accepted White’s challenge with one stipulation: his son John would serve as his deputy. In the late spring and early summer of 1876, the board of directors argued for eight weeks before emerging with a renewed determination to bring “discipline and order” to the Health Reform Institute. Each member agreed the institute needed a vibrant, effective physician at the helm. The answer resided in the compact body of John Harvey Kellogg, MD.12
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JOHN WAS CONVINCED to take the helm only after James White promised him a free hand in reorganizing the institute on a scientific basis, without interference from the Adventist Church. Water therapy and grain-based diets were important, to be sure, but Dr. Kellogg was determined to incorporate the “rational medicine” he had learned at Bellevue. “The rational physician,” Dr. Kellogg later wrote in The Medical Missionary, applies “all of hygio-therapy and all the good of every other system known or possible.”13 This was John’s first step in aligning the doings at Battle Creek with the elite of the American medical profession. It was a transformation later lauded by Dr. Henry Hurd, the superintendent of the Johns Hopkins Hospital, for “having converted into a scientific institution an establishment founded on a vision.”14 The Whites could not yet see it but John’s insistence on independence was a harbinger of the wedge that ultimately developed between an increasingly confident Dr. Kellogg and his micromanaging coreligionists.
Western Health Reform Institute, in 1876, when John Harvey Kellogg became its medical director Credit 30
John began his tenure as the institute’s director on October 1, 1876, for an agreed-upon one-year trial. The day he assumed command, there were twenty patients. Only eight of them were paying for services and six others left with the outgoing director, Dr. William Russell, who abandoned Battle Creek to open a water cure clinic in Ann Arbor. There was also the matter of the institute’s mounting debt and a treasurer-keeper of the purse who happened to be his demanding father, John Preston. Years later, when recalling his early days as the Western’s physician-in-chief, Dr. Kellogg said, “I was just a lad of 24…so great did the task before me seem that the only thing I can remember was a prayer I offered many times a day and for weeks following, ‘Help me Lord’…[and I was determined to] succeed to justify the Whites’ confidence in me or die in [the] attempt.”15 After his first year as medical director, John agreed to stay permanently. In 1921, he told a reporter, “I gradually became more and more entangled in the work and find myself still with it.”16
When he assumed command of the institute, John looked so youthful that he felt compelled to grow a mustache and beard to appear more authoritative. What resulted turned out to be frumbierding, the Old English term for the patchy, wispy, “peach-fuzz” facial hair of a young man. John kept those whiskers for the remainder of his life and they matured and filled out with the rest of him; his beard became positively bushy and his mustache curled on both ends, both thrusting their way out of his face as if they each had a trajectory of their own. In his final years, he trimmed them back a bit but his facial hair remained one of the most prominent features of his beaming, energetic face.17
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AS AN AGENT OF CHANGE, the doctor threatened his more orthodox medical colleagues. For example, in the summer of 1877, as virtually every doctor did when starting a practice in the United States during this era, he joined the local medical society. In Battle Creek, that group was the Calhoun County Medical Society. Seven years later, in 1885, the Medical Society entertained damaging allegations that John was violating the American Medical Association’s code of ethics by advertising his services, writing slanderous critiques of the medical profession, undermining the confidence patients had in their doctors, and deliberately misquoting eminent physicians in his published work. The worst charge, however, was that Dr. Kellogg practiced “irregular” medicine, an especially laughable offense given the state of American medicine combined with the fact that the most dangerous therapies, such as bloodletting, the prescription of toxic drugs, and cupping and blistering, were still tools of many an “orthodox” medical practitioner.18 John’s “water cures” may not have cured, per se, but they, at least, caused no harm.19
As with many professional disputes, there was much more behind these allegations than an ethical violation. In fact, an aggrieved enemy of John’s, William J. Fairfield, was responsible for setting the whole event in motion. Fairfield formerly worked for John, but the two men passionately hated each other and Dr. Fairfield resigned in a huff only to establish a competing health institute in Battle Creek. Unlike John’s burgeoning venture, however, Fairfield’s failed miserably and soon closed. Thereafter, Fairfield was consumed by the need for revenge against his former boss.20
On December 7, 1885, Dr. Fairfield successfully petitioned for a set of hearings before the entire medical society. From January to June of 1886, the trial proceeded in fits and starts mainly because the busy practitioners involved had far more pressing business. In his defense, John argued that it was the Sanitarium, not he, taking out the advertisements in question, which meant he did not personally break the AMA ethical code. This explanation was somewhat disingenuous given that most of these advertisements at the time (and well into the first decades of the twentieth century) ended with the tagline “J. H. Kellogg, M.D., Medical Director.”21 He apologized and backpedaled on the many articles and books he wrote espousing “irregular” medical theories and criticizing the “heroic” and toxic therapies then in vogue. He
told his colleagues that after acquiring more clinical experience and seasoning, he now had the opportunity to revise many of his most offensive opinions. Moreover, he adroitly reasoned, his very membership in the Calhoun County Medical Society spoke of his allegiance to “regular” orthodox medicine as taught and practiced at the best medical schools in the United States.
Only twelve members came to the trial’s final session, including John. The group decided to vote on Fairfield’s charges by secret ballot and, if necessary, take the next steps, up to and including censure and expulsion from the medical society. Some of these doctors were uncomfortable standing in judgment over a colleague; others were eager to fill out their ballot and get on with their medical practice. Dr. Fairfield must have been outraged when the foreman reported that the results were evenly split at 6 to 6. According to the Medical Society’s by-laws, a majority of votes was required for any type of censure or action. The disciplinary committee had no choice but to dismiss the charges with prejudice. Ironically, it was John Harvey Kellogg who filled out the tying ballot, one that protected him from a professional embarrassment his fledgling career might never have withstood.22