Dr. John Harvey Kellogg: Eccentric Innovator Behind Cornflakes and Health Reform

In the 19th century, the idea of the ‘good life’ still involved over-consumption and excess, which inevitably led to ill health, so this period of decadence gave birth to the need for a healthier way of life. Several visionaries were at the forefront of this movement, but few became as famous or more notorious than Dr John Harvey Kellogg, the eccentric manager of the Battle Creek Sanatorium, America’s most popular health resort in the early 20th century.

Dr Kellogg, who made no secret of his disgust with sex and masturbation, claimed that natural and simple foods reduced libido while preventing indigestion, a problem that plagued large numbers of Americans. Experimenting with different cereals, he joined forces with his younger brother, Will Keith Kellogg, and together they invented cornflakes, which changed the breakfast habits of people across America forever.

As active members of the Seventh-day Adventist Church and strong advocates of the temperance movement, the Kellogg brothers promoted the strict dietary and moralistic principles of their religion. Dr. John Harvey Kellogg discouraged his patients in every way from believing that eggs and sausages were appropriate everyday food. In fact, at the end of the 19th century, Americans had a diet high in animal fats, often in the form of salty cured meats. For breakfast, they mostly ate potatoes fried in congealed fat from the previous evening. They consumed heavy, fatty fried foods, creamy vegetables, spicy condiments, lots of alcohol and caffeine. All this led to the very common ailments of upset stomach and ulcers, which was then called dyspepsia.

The role of the rather simple cereal, which John and Will discovered quite by accident and which was actually the result of a mistake, was to help them live a healthy and sustainable life.

John Kellogg, an ardent advocate of sexual abstinence, argued that spicy or sugary foods increase sexual passion and should therefore be avoided. Flakes, which are easy to chew and digest, are said to heal the body and mind, as well as impure thoughts, because of their leanness.

When Will, the younger of the Kellogg brothers, thought about how much money could be made from his new invention, he bought the rights to produce cornflakes from his brother and in 1906 founded the now iconic Kellogg’s brand.

Jealous of his brother’s success and angry at the commercial use of the Kellogg name, John set up a rival cereal company, sparking a legal dispute between the brothers and a lifelong rivalry.

Corn flakes, as corn flakes are originally called, have become an American breakfast icon and are considered one of the greatest inventions of the early 20th century.

The early life of John Harvey Kellogg

John Harvey Kellogg was born on 26 February 1852 in Tyrone, a small rural community in Michigan, to John Preston Kellogg and his second wife Ann Janette Stanley. John Preston Kellogg and his family moved to Michigan in 1834 and, after the death of his first wife and remarriage in 1842, to a farm in Tyrone County. In addition to the six children of his first marriage, John Preston Kellogg and his second wife Ann had eleven children, including John Harvey and his younger brother William Keith, whom they called Will.

Times were hard, but the large Kellogg family kept their faith in God while trying to find their way. John Preston and his wife Ann believed that the Second Coming of Christ was imminent, so they felt that formal education for their children was unnecessary and taught them to read and write themselves. John also learned to play the piano, organ and violin.

The Kelloggs eventually moved to Battle Creek, Michigan, where his father took up broom making without much enthusiasm.

John Harvey was sickly and small for his years as a child. He suffered from recurrent bouts of tuberculosis, which in those days was often a death sentence. He was also plagued by various gastrointestinal problems such as constipation, haemorrhoids, intestinal inflammation and anal fissures, problems which may have led to his later obsession with the digestive system. Indeed, his parents thought he would never live to see adulthood.

As time passed but Christ did not return, John started school at the age of nine or ten and quickly caught up with his peers. When he was ten or eleven, his father decided it was time for him to choose his own path. The boy responded by offering to pay for his own room and board if his father would pay him for his work.

John Preston Kellogg agreed and hired John Harvey to sort corn stalks in the broom house for ten hours each day. Because he did a good job, his father paid him the same wages as the other workers, but young John soon realised that he was not suited to the physical labour and long hours in the factory. He much preferred to immerse himself in a good book to working with his hands. He was self-taught and broadened his horizons through avid reading. He wanted to become a teacher, but religion led him down the path of studying health and well-being.

James White and his wife Ellen, a self-proclaimed prophetess, were important influences in the Adventist movement. Her frequent prophetic visions, which she was said to have experienced, were taken as gospel by the believers of the movement, who were directed to keep their bodies clean by refusing many drinks such as alcohol, coffee and even tea.

Adventists were vegetarians, believing that eating animal flesh was an unclean act that further harmed the body, so they sought to purify it completely. They hoped that by making their bodies and minds as pure as possible, they might bring about the second coming of Jesus Christ.

John Harvey Kellogg appeared in one of Ellen’s visions, in which God revealed to her that John would one day be a very important part of their movement. From that moment on, the Whites and the Adventist movement began to invest heavily in young Kellogg’s future, changing his life and the world forever.

In 1864, the then twelve-year-old John officially began working for the Adventist Church, helping as an apprentice to print and distribute propaganda pamphlets. James White took the ambitious John Harvey under his wing and taught him the ins and outs of church publishing. One of the main themes of the Adventist pamphlets was Ellen White‘s articles on health and well-being, which led to the young Kellogg’s interest in the human body.

John Harvey became a vegetarian at the age of 14, a vow he kept for the rest of his life.

At the age of fifteen, he gathered children from his family and neighbourhood, taught them geography, and at the age of sixteen accepted a job as a teacher in Hastings, Michigan.

As America shifted from a predominantly agricultural way of life to gruelling factory schedules and poor working and living conditions, the negative effects of industrialisation caused more and more health problems for people. Science advanced rapidly in the mid-19th century, particularly in the fields of biology and medicine, but American doctors continued to use methods such as bloodletting and leeches. They also prescribed tobacco, opium and other “cures” for their patients. Many of these drugs contained heroin, cocaine, mercury or arsenic.

All this led Ellen White to advocate for health reform, and in 1866, the Adventists opened a convalescent home in Battle Creek called the Western Health Reform Institute. The Health Reform Institute was based on the Adventist Church’s principles of promoting health and preventing disease. These visions included the importance of proper nutrition, exercise, water, sunlight, moderation, fresh air, rest, and trust in God.

One of the first financial supporters was John Preston Kellogg, father of John Harvey, whose name was later inextricably linked with the foundation.

Medical training

To reinforce their convictions, the leadership of the Seventh-day Adventist Church decided to send selected dedicated young men from their movement to various schools for professional training in the medical field. The Whites personally selected John Harvey Kellogg to attend a five-month course at the Russell Thrall Hygienic Institute in New York in 1872.

Dr Russell Trall was a trained allopath (traditionally trained physician) who advocated an alternative holistic natural medicine without drugs. He believed that disease occurs when God’s natural laws are violated and that disease of the body is directly related to disease of the spirit.

The New York Hygienic Institute was not so much a medical school as an institution where Dr Trall taught the ways of homeopathy and the benefits of healthy eating and living. When the disease developed, doctors tried to eliminate the causes, in contrast to the medical practice of the time, which sought only to suppress the symptoms with drugs, medicines and “quack” tricks. Once the causes were removed, the body tended to heal itself.

Dr Trall’s school was very advanced for the time, being the first of its kind in America to give women equal opportunities to learn alongside men. In fact, almost a third of the students enrolled were women.

Under the patronage of the leaders of the Seventh-day Adventist movement, John Harvey Kellogg continued his medical education at the Bellevue Hospital Medical School in New York, then the best medical school in the country, and graduated with a medical degree in 1875 after two years of schooling.

After graduating in medicine, he spent time in London and Vienna, where he obtained his surgical certificate and learned the most modern surgical techniques of the time. Surgery remained an important part of his career, as he performed up to twenty operations a day with an extremely low complication rate, which meant more than 22,000 operations in his sixty-two years of medical practice. He became so skilled with a scalpel and excellent at suturing incisions that Dr Charles Mayo, founder of the Mayo Clinic, claimed he could look at a healed incision and recognise it as the product of Kellogg’s skilled hands.

As one of the earliest proponents of holistic medicine, John Harvey considered himself a health reformer, fighting to improve body, mind and spirit through a programme he called ‘biological living’.

Battle Creek Sanatorium

Despite the Institute’s rigorous routine, lectures, demanding treatments, exercise and simple food, the financial stability of the Institute for Health Care Reform was precarious during its first ten years of operation. The institution was close to financial collapse, partly because of Ellen White’s mixed feelings about billing for treatment, as she was uncomfortable with the idea of making money at the expense of other people’s illnesses, and would not have felt comfortable at all charging exorbitant amounts. In addition, the medical staff, who were not well trained to begin with, did not inspire confidence in the public and patrons were increasingly hesitant.

Twenty patients were accommodated at the Institute, but only eight were paying for their treatment. Living conditions were not exactly inviting. The food was bland, there was little entertainment, the doctors were impersonal, and the rooms were mouldy and sparsely furnished. Worst of all, during periods of water scarcity, patients had to bathe in water that had previously been used by other clients. One lady reportedly complained: “We are all immersed in the same sauce.”

In 1876, Mr and Mrs White called on a client from Europe to help them. The decision to appoint the twenty-four-year-old Dr John Harvey Kellogg as Superintendent of the Institute was a moment that changed history. After Kellogg’s arrival, the Institute’s reputation grew and its patronage increased. The very next year, the spa facilities were enlarged and the institution was renamed the Medical and Surgical Sanitarium, and a little later the Battle Creek Sanitarium. When someone remarked that the word “sanitarium” was not in the American dictionary, Dr. Kellogg confidently replied that it soon would be.

The new staff brought in by John Harvey had the appropriate medical training from prestigious medical schools, as he expected nothing but excellence from his staff. He began to model Battle Creek Sanatorium on his own ideas of maintaining health and well-being by introducing “modern” treatment techniques that were a blend of his own healthy living programme and current medical science. He believed that it was a person’s “moral duty” to live a healthy life.

Dr Kellogg was not content to simply run the sanatorium, but wanted to be in full control of it. He even began to manipulate Ellen White’s visions – when she was in a sensitive trance state, he would implant his ideas in her consciousness. Ellen then repeated Kellogg’s ideas as if they were her own. This manipulation was one of the ways in which John Harvey steered things towards his vision.

In the 1890s, another tract of the sanatorium was built and other buildings were added. By 1900, recreational facilities were acquired on nearby Lake Goguac and several farms covering some four hundred acres were purchased, providing the sanatorium with an abundant source of milk, eggs, fruit and vegetables. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the sanatorium cared for seven hundred patients and employed nearly a thousand assistants.

Kellogg also became editor of the Adventist health magazine, Health Reformer, which served the dual purpose of advertising the sanatorium and educating the faithful and the wider community about natural remedies for the prevention and treatment of disease. The earliest issues were characterised by the publication of testimonies and explanations by preachers using a biblical or idealistic perspective. John changed the name of the publication to Good Health in 1879, moving towards a slightly more scientific basis for the articles.

Dr. John Harvey Kellogg also lectured and wrote and published over fifty books during his ministry in Battle Creek. He was determined to get his ideas out to the world in any way he could.

He was known for his educational “performances” on stage at the Battle Creek Sanitarium. He threw pieces of steak at a chimpanzee, who immediately threw them back. Then Kellogg threw a banana at the chimp, which promptly ate it, to rapturous applause from the audience. “Even a stupid animal knows what it should and shouldn’t eat!” exclaimed the sworn vegetarian.

He then invited those who were not convinced that this spectacle demonstrated the benefits of a vegetarian diet to come on stage for a more dramatic presentation. He invited them to observe a piece of steak and a sample of manure through a microscope. To their horror, there were more bacteria in the meat than in the faeces! After this shocking experience, few complained about the Spartan diet of vegetables, fruit, nuts and cereals that was the norm in the sanatorium.

In a country where the average life expectancy was just over 40 years and the city streets were literally full of human excrement, the sanatorium under John Harvey became a “beacon” of health and well-being and the largest of its kind in the world. The Kellogg Sanatorium offered a solution for everything that ailed you. It grew from a small church institute for health reform into a national holistic wellness centre, a combination medical centre, spa and hotel, treating around 1200 people a year. On arrival, the client was given a thorough examination and then assigned to a regime of baths, massages, exercise and diet.

Treatment regime at the sanatorium

The American diet and lifestyle at the end of the 19th century was often excessively high in fat, which caused many health problems for people, including stomach problems, nervousness and indigestion.

Dr Kellogg practised much of what he preached – he was an enthusiastic vegetarian and was said to have lived a celibate life during his four-decade marriage. He was constantly experimenting with countless healing modalities and invented dozens of original techniques and devices to improve mind and body. Some of his ideas, especially on diet and exercise, have proved to be extremely prudent, while others seem bizarre, absurd or even barbaric today.

Like other physicians of the time, Dr Kellogg experimented with the therapeutic effects of artificial light. Some of these experiments, such as the use of light to treat depression, have become widely accepted practice.

Kellogg promoted light therapy as a near-universal cure and invented the world’s first incandescent bath – a wooden cabinet lined with light bulbs in which the patient could sit or lie. The “Light Machine” was even featured at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, his horizontal light bath was the pride of the Titanic and was used by King Edward at Buckingham Palace.

The head of the sanatorium prescribed light therapy for an astonishing range of ailments, including diabetes, insomnia, gangrene, syphilis and even writer’s cramp.

He also believed that the colour white absorbed the sun, so he consistently wore all-white clothing and footwear to take full advantage of the benefits of sunlight. He often directed the light from an arc lamp into his ear or scalp as another way of absorbing the healing light.

Kellogg’s interest in the therapeutic power of electricity did not stop at light baths. Using a device he assembled from telephone parts, he began delivering mild doses of electric current directly to the skin of his patients. Electrical stimulation is still used today for certain medical purposes, but the ever-optimistic Kellogg claimed that it could treat lead poisoning, tuberculosis, obesity and, if applied directly to the patient’s eyeballs, various visual disorders.

Battle Creek offered 46 different types of baths: cold, hot and electrified. Some were relatively common, but there were also options such as the “continuous bath”, which was similar to a normal bath in a tub, except that it could last, as Kellogg wrote, “for hours, days, weeks or months, depending on the case.” The patient could only get out occasionally if he used the toilet. Kellogg advocated continuous baths as a treatment for skin diseases, chronic diarrhoea and a number of mental illnesses, including delirium, hysteria and mania.

The clients of the sanatorium were constantly subjected to enemas because Dr Kellogg, in his own words, waged war against the colon, describing it as “a repository of impure and hostile parasites, a veritable Pandora’s box of disease and degeneration”.

To cure “self poisoning”, he offered a series of enema machines designed to flush the colon with an impressive amount of water in just a few seconds, often followed by flushing the bowel with half a litre of yoghurt to help further cleanse and reintroduce good bacteria into the bowel. Kellogg liked to boast that he also starts each day with an enema.

He was so obsessed with the bowel and digestion that in 1915 he wrote a 362-page book called Hygiene of the Colon, which explored how the colon works and how it can be treated, right up to its removal. Dr. Kellogg treated thousands of patients during his years in Battle Creek, and surgically removed the affected parts of the colon from most of them.

The eccentric physician designed countless devices for exercise and other purposes, among which was the vibrating chair. In contrast to today’s well-padded vibrating armchairs, Kellogg’s version consisted of a plain wooden chair that shook up to 60 times per second with the obvious purpose of stimulating peristalsis. When toxins were eliminated in this way, headaches and back pain would disappear and the body would be filled with “a healthy dose of oxygen”, Kellogg claimed.

Other Kellogg innovations included beating and punching machines, which allowed patients to choose whether to be punched or flogged to stimulate their circulation, an oscillomanipulator, a mechanical horse, a window tent for air supply, a pneumograph and various surgical aids such as a retractor.

Treatment of self-circulation

Dr John Harvey Kellogg also had unique ideas about sexuality, as he was a fervent advocate of sexual abstinence. As a physician, he was well aware of the harmful effects of sexually transmitted diseases such as syphilis, which was incurable before 1910, and he devoted much of his educational work to discouraging sexual activity, also on the basis of the views promoted by the Seventh-day Adventist Church. If illicit sexual intercourse is a heinous sin, masturbation is twice as heinous a crime.

As a follower of the teachings of Sylvester Graham, who was known for his emphasis on vegetarianism, temperance and the use of wholemeal bread made from unprocessed flour, John advocated a simple and lean diet to prevent impure thoughts and the consequent sexual desire. Those experiencing temptation should avoid spicy foods and intoxicating drinks and eat very little meat, if any.

Dr Kellogg presented his views in one of his more comprehensive books, which was published in ever longer editions in the early 20th century. He was still unmarried when he published the first edition of Simple Facts on Sex Life, 356 pages long, in 1877. He and his wife, Ella Ervilla Eaton, who was in charge of ingenious vegetarian recipes at the sanatorium, apparently wrote another 156 pages during their honeymoon in 1879 and published the new edition as Simple Facts for Old and Young. By the time the 4th reprint came out in 1917, the book was already 900 pages long, but had sold an incredible half a million copies.

Although John Harvey and Ella Kellogg remained totally committed to each other during their forty-one-year relationship, they apparently never consummated their marriage. The doctor believed that sexual intimacy would exhaust his “life force” and, as a follower of puritanism, Ella also believed in sexual abstinence.

They slept in separate bedrooms and never had biological children of their own; instead, they fostered more than forty children, seven of whom they formally adopted.

John Harvey Kellogg, who was a lifelong ardent opponent of what he called a “solitary habit” and a “disgusting practice”, wrote that masturbation causes indigestion, memory loss, poor eyesight, heart disease, epilepsy and insanity – to name just a few of the insidious side-effects.

To help young boys kick the habit, Kellogg suggested various procedures, ranging from the ridiculous to the barbaric, including tying the hands, bandaging the organ and sewing a silver thread through the penis to prevent erections. If this did not help, he recommended circumcision without an anaesthetic, “as the short pain accompanying the operation will have a soothing effect on the mind, and the pain following recovery, which may last for several weeks, will break the disgusting habit, and if it has not become too firm beforehand, it can be forgotten and not resumed.”

The range of procedures for girls is similarly horrific, including electric shocks and the application of pure carbolic acid to the clitoris or, in more extreme cases, its surgical removal.

Dr Kellogg lists thirty-nine suspicious warning signs to look out for: from general weakness, exhaustion, pallor and poor posture, to mood swings and the appearance of acne. In boys, there is dwarfism, the voice does not deepen and facial hair does not sprout, while in girls, unnatural thinness, menstrual disturbances and a lack of grace and pleasantness are a cause for concern.

Early ‘exercise’ of the genital organs is thought in many cases to accelerate puberty, especially if the habit is acquired early; sexual climax also depletes vital energies, leading to stunted growth and development. Like the body, the psyche is often stunted.

Nail-biting is a very common occurrence in addicts of this habit, and “should be suspected and carefully watched”.

These are, of course, just a few of the examples cited by Kellogg. The list is even contradictory at times, listing both boldness and shyness as possible signs.

The evils of sexuality also extended to the world of dance, as the advocate of sexual abstinence was convinced that dances such as the waltz would lead to a proliferation of immorality that was harmful to the body, mind and spirit.

Collaboration with his younger brother

In 1879, John Harvey brought his younger brother Will Keith Kellogg to the Sanatorium, who then helped him keep the books and took care of most of the business affairs for twenty-five years, so that John Harvey could concentrate fully on his medical ideas.

Will, who was suspected of being unintelligent because of his reading difficulties, started working in his father’s factory at the age of seven to earn money to buy clothes. It was not until he was in his twenties that he realised that his reading difficulties were caused by myopia and his cleverness was revealed. He had completed a four-month business course, making him the ideal candidate to help John Harvey, while never challenging his absolute authority.

John considered his brother “one of the most loyal, caring and hard-working people” he had ever known. Nevertheless, his elder brother treated Will mercilessly, often verbally abusing him and sidelining him as intellectually inferior, while expecting him to work long hours for him, serve as his personal secretary and look after his extensive personal and business affairs.

Although he looked after the finances of the sanatorium, he was not allowed to have an office. He also worked 120 hours a week and was not granted his first leave until nine years later.

His elder brother called him his “hungry man” and made him follow him around with a notebook, dictating ideas as they came to him. This meant that when John Harvey rode his bicycle across the health campus, Will was forced to run alongside him to keep up. John Harvey even made his younger brother follow him into the toilet and write down his ideas. Will was quiet, but he hated John’s attitude. But these painstaking tasks eventually led him to great success and wealth.

The employees of the sanatorium were paid up to nine dollars a week. Will was no exception, and despite being at his brother’s 24-hour disposal, he was paid a meagre wage. The novice nurses were provided with board and lodging, but no pay, which was not uncommon in the 19th century. Dr Kellogg also considered the honour of working under his direction to be sufficient compensation.

Employees also had to give up meat, which is not a surprising request, since Kellogg was so seriously convinced of the health benefits of a vegetarian lifestyle that he demanded it not only of his clients but also of all his employees. The menus in the sanatorium included carefully selected simple dishes of vegetables, fruit, nuts and cereals. Salt and sugar were not offered, as they were considered unnecessary and impure.

It was Kellogg’s commitment to changing the diets of his patients that soon led him to start working on developing his own alternative foods.

The discovery of cornflakes

John Harvey Kellogg developed and marketed a wide range of vegetarian foods that were designed to be easy to chew and digest. He experimented with different grains, from wheat, oats, rice, barley to corn, but his experiments failed time and again. The meals Kellogg prepared, carefully mixing different cereals with vegetables and adding nuts, were tasteless and rejected by the sanatorium’s clients.

Around 1877, he developed a dough that was a mixture of wheat, oats and corn. In order to break down the starch molecules in the grain, the bread was baked at high temperatures for a long time. Kellogg broke the cooled bread into crumbs and marketed them under the name Granula, but this caused legal problems with James Caleb Jackson, who was already selling wheat flakes under that name. In 1881, Kellogg changed the name of the flakes to Granola because of Jackson’s threat of legal action.

The Kellogg brothers continued to try to produce something ‘edible’, something that would offer significantly more flavour, while at the same time being in line with John’s philosophy of ‘biological life’. They wanted to develop an easier-to-digest wheat bread which they believed would improve the digestion of clients coming for treatment, while at the same time dulling their sexual appetites. To do this, they passed the cooked wheat through special rollers for further baking, resulting in something similar to a cracker.

One day Will left a bowl of cooked wheat grain porridge on the table. After a few days, the porridge had dried out, but his brother, the thrifty John, decided not to throw it away, but to try running the already slightly mouldy wheat through the rollers again. Instead of a whole layer of dough, individual flakes were formed, which turned out to be pleasantly crispy after baking. The first flakes were made with wheat, which was later replaced by maize, as the concept worked for several other cereals and for the first time, patients at Battle Creek Convalescent Home were able to eat their breakfast with gusto.

In April 1896, a year after their discovery, the brothers were granted a patent for the preparation of corn flakes, a wise decision that would later develop into a large and lucrative industry. Cornflakes were first sold as a ‘healthy breakfast’, but their nutritional properties, easy digestibility and pleasant taste soon led to a widespread consumer demand for them as a food for general consumption.

Will had reached the point where he was fed up with his brother and was about to strike out on his own, but tragic events in 1902 put an end to his plans. The main building of the sanatorium burned to the ground. The younger Kellogg could not leave his brother in his distress and stayed behind to help him rebuild the spa, which John had planned to be even bigger and better than before.

This led to open conflict between the elder Kellogg and the leadership of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, who wanted only a modest reconstruction. They also became less and less tolerant of John’s leadership, philosophy and doctrines, which eventually led to his excommunication in 1907, but Dr. Kellogg retained many of his friendships with Adventists and the characteristics of the Adventist way of life until his death.

Because of the commercial potential of discovering a simple but tasty meal, Will wanted the recipe for the cereal to remain a secret, but John allowed everyone in the sanatorium to watch the flaking process, much to the dismay of his enterprising younger brother.

Charles William Post, one of the sanatorium’s guests, copied the process and set up his own company, Post Cereals, which earned him his first million dollars in a short space of time. Post’s company is now known as Post Consumer Brands and owns many cereal brands.

In 1906, as Will continued to develop and market cereals, he made a move that looked like a terrible sin in the eyes of his older brother, a doctor. To improve the taste and appeal of the product, Will, who had no education but a strong sense of enterprise, added sugar to his breakfast cereals, which led to a dispute between the brothers that lasted until their deaths.

The Grain War

In 1906, Will Kellogg paid his brother John, who was still obsessed with finding a healthy diet, half a million dollars for exclusive rights to Kellogg’s Corn Flakes, paving the way for an empire. He developed his own business, the Kellogg Company, which eventually became hugely successful, while John was denied the right to use the Kellogg family name and could only sell the cereal through the sanatorium. Will achieved the ultimate revenge for all the years of humiliation and subjugation, but he remained modest and did not feel comfortable in his role as a rich man.

There was much ill will between the Kellogg brothers and they rarely, if ever, spoke after the lawsuit.

In 1910, a family disagreement went to court, the start of a decade-long feud between the brothers, who fought each other in court over various issues, particularly the use of the family name.

John Harvey was very upset about the commercialisation of their family name and product, which was only intended as an important part of his philosophy of “biological life”. Being in debt, he also hated the fact that Will was doing well. The elder of the Kellogg brothers, he founded The Kellogg Toasted Corn Flake Company in 1908 and began marketing the new ‘sterilised bran’.

Will Kellogg was a progressive businessman who introduced four six-hour shifts at his cereal factory during the global economic crisis after the New York Stock Exchange crash in 1929, which provided more jobs for the local economy.

He also worked to develop more innovative ways of promoting his product. Adverts for Kellogg’s cereals soon became a dominant feature in magazines, newspapers and on billboards. Will embarked on a variety of marketing campaigns, from advertising on giant 50-metre billboards to the ingenious ‘Wink at your salesman’ marketing campaign. The ad advised customers to wink at their retailer and then they would get a free sample of Kellogg’s Corn Flakes.

Will Kellogg’s was one of the first companies to put nutrition labels on food products and the inventive entrepreneur was also the first to offer a children’s prize, a colouring book, in the packaging, further increasing brand awareness and popularity.

John Harvey Kellogg and eugenics

Kellogg’s role in promoting the eugenics movement is a dark stain on the legacy of the man in the white suit, as the famous doctor devoted the last 30 years of his life to developing the science of eugenics, which often involved blatant bigotry and racism. He was an ardent supporter of it long before the trend became notorious in Hitler’s Nazi Germany, even if his scientific racism sometimes clashed with his personal views, especially when it came to African Americans.

Although he did not hold African-Americans in high esteem as a race and was convinced of their intellectual inferiority, he rejected the segregation of blacks in his sanatorium, where African-American doctors and nurses were trained. Kellogg also treated the legendary abolitionist Sojourner Truth at the sanatorium and once reportedly transplanted part of his own skin to treat an ulcer.

In Battle Creek, John Harvey co-founded and helped fund the Race Betterment Foundation, a racist organisation that became the centre of the eugenics movement in America. Kellogg insisted that a registry should be created to identify eligible breeding couples in order to control the white race and keep it pure. He also supported forced sterilisation, believing that anyone who was not of “good birth”, from the mentally ill to criminals, should not be allowed to reproduce. There were many famous eugenicists of the period, including President Theodore Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and (rather ironically) Helen Keller.

Dr Kellogg organised the first conference on race improvement, which was actually a fair for eugenicists. The conference even held what were known as Better Baby competitions, in which white babies were judged and rewarded on the basis of their “breeding”.

Both John Harvey and Ella Kellogg, who did not have biological children due to sexual abstinence, believed that a quality environment could overcome negative hereditary tendencies. They wanted to test this view and fostered several children from ‘undesirable’ backgrounds. This was a diverse “family” group of forty-two children, including four Mexicans, seven African-Americans and one Puerto Rican. All were educated at the Kellogg Home by Ella with the help of another teacher, Mary Lamson, and several of these children later went on to distinguished careers.

John Harvey Kellogg was said to have been a good father, leading regular family devotions and entertaining the children before going to work in the morning.

Unfortunately, despite good care, healthy food and a loving environment, some of the children proved to be a disappointment. One in particular, George, the son of a Chicago prostitute, was a source of embarrassment for Kellogg and his wife. George became a klutz and often demanded money from Kellogg in exchange for avoiding scandalous public activities that would have embarrassed the doctor.

Kellogg’s experience with children like George may have led to his later involvement in the eugenics movement, which promoted “good breeding” among humans.

Late years

In 1930, William Keith Kellogg founded the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and instructed trustees and employees as a guiding principle: “As long as you promote the health, happiness and well-being of children, you may use the money as you see fit.”

During the Great Depression, Battle Creek Sanatorium also fell on hard times, with a seventy-five percent drop in turnover. When they racked up more than three million dollars in debt, they were forced to settle. In 1942, the main building was purchased by the US Army and converted into the Percy Jones Military Hospital. With a heavy heart, John left the sanatorium where he had practised his special blend of medicine and healing for sixty-two years and made a new life for himself in Florida, where he opened another sanatorium.

William Keith generously offered his brother $1.5 million (approximately $21 million today) to buy John’s Battle Creek Food Company. John Harvey was offended and turned down the offer, believing it to be too low. He continued to work in the medical field and was a pioneer in identifying the risks of high blood pressure and heart disease. During his time in Florida, his relevance began to wane as medicine progressed and moved further and further away from his outdated ideals.

Despite his complex personality, Dr John Harvey Kellogg was a respected physician and a popular wellness guru with many advanced ideas about healing that are still useful today – and many that seem downright quaint. Although eccentric, he was in some ways a visionary thinker, far ahead of his time, believing that proper diet, exercise and recreation were necessary to maintain a healthy body, mind and soul.

John Harvey is one of the many people credited with the invention of peanut butter. He developed the first acidophilus milk and patented the first vegetable meat substitute in America, protozoa. Dr Kellogg designed and improved many medical devices, but he did not seek to make money from his medical inventions. “All my inventions are part of the philanthropic work I do,” he explained.

In October 1942, Will Kellogg made a short trip to Florida, where his brother John was living, to discuss some business matters. He realised that his elder brother was a shell of the fierce and determined man he had once been, and that he was increasingly losing touch with reality. The rift caused by the cereal row had taken a heavy toll on their relationship, and now that John Harvey had almost lost his senses, any hope of reconciliation was dashed. The Kellogg brothers never spoke to each other again.

On his deathbed, John is said to have dictated a seven-page letter to his secretary for Will, apologising to him for all his cruelties and meanness.

Dr John Harvey Kellogg died on 14 December 1943, aged 91, an unusually high age at the time, and showing that he knew a thing or two about staying healthy.

His younger brother did not receive the letter until five years after his brother’s death, as John’s secretary had refused to send it earlier. She thought it would be a humiliation for her employer.

By then, Will had gone blind from glaucoma and was moved to tears by the letter he had to read. He died on 6 October 1951, also aged 91.

Legacy

In the late 19th century, the Battle Creek Sanatorium was undoubtedly the place to be for people who wanted to be cured of illnesses they had never had. Dr. Kellogg and his staff catered to rich hypochondriacs who were commonly diagnosed as suffering from “self-mutilation”.

Many famous clients visited the elegant spa retreat, including playwright George Bernard Shaw, industrialist Henry Ford, wealthy businessman John D. Rockefeller, Wall Street Journal owner C.W. Baron, several US presidents with wives, and even the famous 1927 Olympic swimmer Johnny Weissmuller. Dr Kellogg persuaded him to follow a strict vegetarian diet during his visit, and Weissmuller later broke one of his own records, further validating Kellogg’s programme.

John Harvey Kellogg was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2006 for his discovery of sprouting and the development of the first dry breakfast cereals.

Will Kellogg dominated his competitors by introducing new products such as Rice Krispies and Coco Pops; he improved the quality and crunchiness that unconsciously influences the popularity of the cereal, and he also improved the packaging and marketing.

From initially selling just a few dozen boxes of cereal a day, today Kellogg’s sales are enormous, with factories in 19 countries around the world. You can find their cereals and snacks in almost every shop, in virtually every country, from the richest to the poorest.

The Kellogg brothers revolutionised breakfast cereals, and today cereals are popular all over the world because they can simply be shaken out of the box, poured over milk or yoghurt and eaten.