The Kelloggs Read online

  Despite John’s obvious intelligence and desire to “learn things,” his parents were less than eager to enroll him in school. So convinced of the looming return of Jesus Christ and the end of the world, many adult members of the Seventh-day Adventists saw little need to “overeducate” their children. This belief, combined with John’s relatively poor health, led to a rather spotty lesson plan beyond Ann’s insistence that he be taught to read and write. When John finally did enter grammar school at age ten, he quickly outpaced his peers and became a voracious consumer of history, chemistry, botany, and astronomy. Adept at mathematics, he sailed through his multiplication tables, long division, square roots, algebra, and the rudiments of geometry. He mastered shorthand and German and devoured the works of Pope, Swift, Addison, Hume, Johnson, and Franklin, all of whose writings he could quote with great accuracy throughout his long life.27

  John’s avid reading and need for attention also served as fuel for a somewhat wild imagination. He became well known about town for spinning elaborate yarns of heroic encounters with wild animals and how he emerged victorious from a series of dangerous but imaginary scrapes. When his mother confronted the boy with his public fibbing, John quickly owned up to it, explaining, “Satan made me.” Demonstrating impeccable timing, he added, “Mother, I wish God would kill Satan.”28

  A steady diet of fire-and-brimstone sermons along with the lessons he learned in Sabbath School led the boy to become preoccupied with discerning good from evil. During many class sessions, the children were shown images of terrifying beasts predicted to descend upon earth come the Judgment Day. At one class, his teacher informed the youngsters that only 144,000 souls would be saved on the “Day of Reckoning.” After a cursory calculation of how many people were living at the time, John wept in despair that he would never be good enough to be selected and saved. All these fatalistic and frightening lessons would have been unsettling for any young mind but especially for a boy who was as imaginative, thoughtful, and impressionable as John. In his later years, the doctor recalled, “When I was a boy anything that was fun was regarded as wicked.”29

  John was, however, blessed with an inquiring mind and he had the courage to challenge the lessons he was being taught. While reviewing the opening lines of Genesis, his teachers told him that God had created the universe and everything in it and that all of His creations were good. The boy mulled things over before asking, “If God made everything, did he also make Satan?” The teacher admitted that God did create Satan. “Johnny,” as he was called, queried, “If God made everything good, why didn’t he make Satan good?” Stumped by his pupil, the teacher abruptly dismissed the class and sent them all home for dinner. The following week, little Johnny was assigned to another class.30

  John was especially hard on himself when he thought he had committed a sin. Some seventy-five years after the event, with tears in his eyes, John told an associate about the time he spied a robin resting on a log. The boy was armed with a rawhide whip, which he used to lead cows to the water trough. He decided to see “how near I can come to it” and flicked his whip at the robin. With perfect aim, the whip hit the bird’s head causing it to fall over dead. Young John was stricken with a lingering remorse: “I sobbed and sobbed and on my knees I promised God I would never kill another thing as long as I lived, and I have not. I even walk around the cockroaches.” So committed to this pledge, he maintained a large menagerie, ranging from dogs and wolves to exotic birds, on the San’s grounds.31

  When he was nine years old, John asked his mother to assign him some of the household chores, just like his other brothers and sisters. Ann Janette instructed him to tend to the milk cows, fill up the woodbin, and help her prepare meals and make soap. This he did and because it often involved working with his mother, the two became especially close. When John turned eleven, Mr. Kellogg insisted the boy earn his keep in a more substantial way. John told his father, “If you will pay me for what I do for you, I will pay you for what you do for me.” John Preston took his son at his word and from that moment on, John proudly recalled later in life, he made his own way in the world.32

  Mr. Kellogg assigned young John to a ten-hour shift on the broom factory floor sorting broomcorn. The boy’s manual dexterity was such that he was soon able to process as much broomcorn and put together brooms as quickly as the adult men working for his father. John assessed the inequity in compensation, when compared to the other workers, and cheekily demanded their full wage of $2 per day (about $38.90 in 2016). John Preston paid him the full amount, knowing a bargain when he saw it. Unfortunately, the long hours hunched over the workbench making brooms resulted in John’s becoming somewhat “round-shouldered.” John counteracted this postural damage by sleeping on the hard floor; both the condition and treatment helped spark his later research on the importance of proper carriage, posture, sitting, and standing.

  A few years before the son joined his father’s firm, John Preston built a makeshift candy counter to attract the sweet teeth and, more importantly, the pennies of the town’s children. Several times a day, John dipped into its stores for licorice and sour balls to satiate his love of sugar, a desire he would conquer as an adult and warn against to his legion of patients.33 Consequently, the adult John knew from whereof he spoke when he warned his patients to avoid the consumption of sugar because “there are people who are actually candy inebriates.”34

  No fan of backbreaking manual labor, John committed to performing only “hard jobs that were worthwhile,” meaning those that required the ingenuity of his mind rather than the sweat of his brow. One afternoon he told his mother of these intentions but iterated he would not likely satisfy her wish that he study medicine. He recounted his spying through the window of a friend who was undergoing minor surgery on the kitchen table. The sight of blood so sickened him that he was determined to become “anything but a doctor.” Not long after his confession, he passed his mother’s bedroom and overheard her praying. The boy quietly entered, sidled next to his mother, and nestled in the crook of her bent arm. Ann Janette reached down with her other hand and touched John’s head, praying that her favorite son dedicate his life to God, for the greatest benefit of humanity. It was a formative moment that the child recalled, embellished, and treasured for the remainder of his days. Despite his many faults and foibles, flaws that would only become more aggressive and detrimental in the years to come, there was always a deep vein of Christian spirit and service that ran through most everything John ever did.35

  —

  AN EQUALLY IMPORTANT childhood influence was John’s relationship with Ellen and James White, the spiritual leaders of the Seventh-day Adventists. Ellen was a self-proclaimed prophetess with a remarkably large following that continues to the present day. She told her followers that she experienced many “visions” from God. These episodes and their spiritual import were promptly recorded, interpreted, set into type, printed as “testimonies,” and distributed to her co-religionists. Not a few retrospective diagnosticians have suggested her “visions” shared great similarity with the symptoms of epilepsy. Mrs. White insisted, and many others believe, these spells—be they neurologically, psychologically, or theologically derived—were supernatural and constituted a true line of communication with God.36

  From the distance of more than a century and a half, it is fascinating to note how many of Ellen White’s experiences of the religious variety were connected to personal health. Her Seventh-day Adventist theology was remarkable for its emphasis on a sound body and a slate of hygienic habits, to maintain one’s physical, mental and spiritual health, and sexual purity. When it came to diet, Ellen found great import in a passage from Genesis (1:29): “And God said, ‘Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.’ ” She strictly interpreted this as God’s order to consume a grain and vegetarian diet. She further preached that Seventh-day Adventists mus
t abstain not only from eating meat but also tobacco, coffee, tea, and, of course, alcohol. She warned against indulging in the excitatory influences of greasy, fried fare, spicy condiments, and pickled foods; overeating; drugs of any kind; binding corsets, wigs, and tight dresses. Such evils, she taught, led to the morally and physically destructive “self vice” of masturbation and the less lonely vice of excessive sexual intercourse.37

  An Elder in the Church, James White was president of the Church’s Review and Herald Publishing Company and Ellen’s husband. Impressed by John’s intellect, spirit, and drive, James groomed John for a key role in the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Imagine how awe-inspiring for a twelve-year-old boy to be selected for glory by the de facto head of his church. White hired John as The Advent Review and Sabbath Herald’s “printer’s devil,” the now forgotten name for an apprenticeship to printers and publishers in the days of typesetting by hand and cumbersome, noisy printing presses. There, like many other American printer’s devils who went on to greatness, including Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, and Lyndon Johnson, John mixed up batches of ink, filled paste pots, retrieved individual letters of type to set, and proofread the not always finished printed copy. He was swimming in a river of words and took to it with glee.

  John reviewed news stories about church members and events. He edited sermons, health advice, and the transcripts of Ellen’s testimonies of her visions with the Creator. While proofing the pages of so many other writers, John discovered his own talent for composing clear and balanced sentences, filled with rich explanatory metaphors and allusions. At sixteen, he was editing and shaping the church’s monthly health advice magazine, The Health Reformer. One perk of the job was being a frequent dinner guest at the Whites’. On many winter evenings, after a long day of meeting deadlines in the printing plant, he spent the night there, as well. In late adolescence John became a vegetarian, because the Whites told him abstaining from “flesh-eating” helped young men grow a few inches. His commitment to a meatless diet was lifelong even if his height topped out at a mere five-foot-four.

  —

  THERE WERE SEVERAL practical reasons, beyond those described in Ellen White’s ministry, that inspired John’s interest in dietary matters. One historian of foodways has characterized this moment of culinary history as the era of “the great American stomach ache.”38 In 1858, Walt Whitman described indigestion as “the great American evil.”39 A cursory review of the mid-nineteenth-century American diet on the “civilized” Eastern Seaboard, within the nation’s interior, and on the frontier explains why one of the most common medical complaints of the day was dyspepsia, a nineteenth-century catchall term for a medley of flatulence, constipation, diarrhea, heartburn, and “upset stomach.”

  Poor or rich, Americans of this era simply overate. Worse, their diet consisted of huge amounts of animal fat, salt, and sugar. Well-to-do Americans routinely ate large, midday “dinners,” or luncheon, consisting of two or three main courses, served with creamed vegetables, heavy (and fatty) gravies, cheese, bread and butter, pitchers of whole milk, and a dessert such as fruit pie or a pudding. At the evening supper, there might be three meat entrées on the bill of fare, a longer list of side dishes, and many more caloric desserts. On the Atlantic coast, there was often fresh seafood, even if frying was the preparation of choice, unless it was shellfish, which tended to be steamed or boiled. During the harsh winter months, when fishing proved difficult if not impossible, many ate codfish that was dried, salted, and stocked in barrels, reconstituted with water, and boiled.

  In the backwoods of Michigan, settlers consumed great quantities of cured pork and, if they could afford it, beef preserved in wet brines. For supper, the matriarch typically fried up a hunk of one or both of these salty meats in a great amount of oil or leftover fat. If the meat was too lean to produce enough fat for frying, the dry and stringy cut was boiled and served with a flour-and-butter-based gravy. On special occasions there might be beef tongue, veal, mutton, or any number of game animals shot, killed, and dressed that day. Molasses and cane syrup, typically stored in hogsheads, added another huge source of calories and a sweet taste to the savory. Fresh produce was often in short supply, depending on the time of the year and the family’s financial situation, even among those who farmed. This situation necessitated the canning, pickling, jellying, and preserving of vegetables and fruits. To make up for the de-flavorizing nature of these early attempts at food processing, most meals were accompanied by a variety of spicy condiments and lots of pepper and salt.40

  The American breakfast was especially problematic in terms of fat content and indigestion. For much of the nineteenth century, many early morning repasts included filling, starchy potatoes, fried in the congealed fat from last night’s dinner. As a source of protein, cured and heavily salted meats, such as ham or bacon, were fried up as well. Filling as these meals were, the staggeringly high salt content made one quite thirsty and eager for a drink—a situation not lost on the saloonkeepers of every town in America who routinely opened for business in the morning. Others ate a meatless breakfast, including whole milk or heavy cream and boiled rice, often flavored with syrup. Some ate brown bread, milk-toast, and graham crackers to fill their bellies. The most conscientious of mothers awoke at the crack of dawn in order to stand over a hot wood-burning stove for hours on end cooking and stirring gruels, or mush, made of barley, cracked wheat, or oats. Almost all of these meals were washed down with seemingly bottomless cups of coffee, tea, or cocoa.41

  One wag inappropriately cracked that “Michiganders would eat anything, even a boiled Indian.”42 While nowhere close to the cannibalistic, John’s half-brother Merritt recalled that his family’s diet was hardly light or salubrious: “our morning meal was invariably hot pancakes with bacon fat and molasses; our dinner was, in part, of pork cooked in some of the various ways, fried, baked or boiled.”43 Confirming his half-brother’s memories, John told a rapt San audience, “When I was a boy we knew nothing about diet….The American people eat less than one half as much per capita as they did in those days.” Dr. Kellogg went on to describe his favorite boyhood dish, “I thought there was nothing more delicious than an oxtail, which had been turned to a rich brown in the oven.”44 With menus like this, it is easy to see why the family’s patriarch, John Preston Kellogg, complained of a bout of chronic diarrhea that lasted more than a decade.45

  3

  New Brooms Sweep Clean

  THE BOOKSHELVES in the Whites’ library bulged with volumes on Christian theology, health, child rearing, diet, sexuality, and physiology. John had ready access to them all and voraciously read his way through their collection. Among the many early- to mid-nineteenth-century American medical theorists who influenced him were William A. Alcott, James Caleb Jackson, Russell Trall, and Sylvester Graham. Each of these men was blessed with a literary gift for explaining anatomy, physiology, and hygiene through the prism of Christian theology.1 Their books sold well, went through several editions, and were read by a wide and varied American audience. Unlike the “regular” or orthodox doctors of the era, these health reformers taught that toxic drugs, savage bloodletting, and painful cupping were best avoided. Theological explanations aside, their most enduring prescriptions for health and diet are familiar, reasonable, and even admirable by twenty-first-century standards. Not surprisingly, Ellen White gobbled up and appropriated all of these experts’ religio-medical theories for her ministry. She called her version “health reform.”2

  Undoubtedly, the most influential health reformer of this era was Sylvester Graham (1794–1851), a fiery Presbyterian minister, temperance advocate, health zealot, and self-proclaimed “Christian physiologist.” Graham was the cofounder (with the “Christian physician,” William A. Alcott) of the American Physiological Society, an academic organization that continues to advance the field to this very day, albeit in a far more scientific manner than its earliest iteration. In 1850, he helped found the American Vegetarian Socie
ty (with the hydrotherapy expert Russell Trall and others). Graham is best recalled, however, as the inventor of the graham cracker.

  Sylvester Graham, the health reformer and “Christian physiologist” Credit 15

  Long before millions began chomping on those delightfully crisp, thin wafers, Graham conjured up what he called “Graham Gems.” The main ingredients were whole grain wheat flour (which contained the most nutritious part of the wheat berry, often discarded in the manufacture of white flour) and some water. He baked this batter into small, hard, crunchy “nuggets,” using a cast iron “gem pan” he invented and sold by the thousands.3 His lectures were eagerly attended by a legion of devoted followers known as Grahamites and delivered along the church circuits, to YMCA chapters, and at civic auditoriums across the United States.

  In his orations Mr. Graham stressed the importance of personal and sexual cleanliness through daily baths and vows of abstinence against sexual activity of any kind (especially masturbation, or “Self-Pollution”). Given their double duty as both reproductive and urinary tract organs, he described the penis and the vagina as the human body’s sewer. His treatment for sexual impurity was a meatless diet of vegetables, whole wheat “Graham bread,” and the moderate consumption of eggs, cheese, and milk. This regimen, he insisted, blocked impure thoughts and drowned out the siren call to masturbate.4 Graham further lectured about the evils of alcohol, which not only destroyed families but could also lead to tuberculosis, cholera, and insanity. Graham saw himself as a modern-day savior and worked hard to convince the adults attending his lectures to adopt his health teachings and pass them on to their children. Physical health meant physical purity and because the body was intertwined with the soul, Graham argued, his prescriptions helped eliminate evil, promoted the greater good in human society, and pleased God.5