John Harvey Kellogg (February 26, 1852 – December 14, 1943) was an American businessman, inventor, physician, and advocate of the health reforms advocated by the Battle Creek Progressive Friends movement and the eugenics policies espoused by many in the Progressive Movement. He was the director of the Battle Creek Sanitarium in Battle Creek, Michigan, founded by members of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. It combined aspects of a European spa, a hydrotherapy institution, a hospital, and a high-class hotel. Kellogg treated the rich and famous, as well as the poor who could not afford other hospitals. According to Encyclopædia Britannica, he "developed numerous nut and vegetable products to vary the diet of the patients, including a flaked-wheat cereal called Granose and cornflakes. Although cornflakes were not new, they had never before been presented as a breakfast food [...] Kellogg was [also] a cofounder of the Race Betterment Foundation, an organization that promoted eugenics and racial segregation." An early proponent of the germ theory of disease, Kellogg was well ahead of his time in relating intestinal flora and the presence of bacteria in the intestines to health and disease. The sanitarium approached treatment in a holistic manner, actively promoting vegetarianism, nutrition, the use of yogurt enemas to clear "intestinal flora", exercise, sun-bathing, and hydrotherapy, as well as abstinence from smoking tobacco, drinking alcoholic beverages, and sexual activity. Kellogg dedicated the last 30 years of his life to promoting eugenics and racial segregation. Kellogg was a major leader in progressive health reform, particularly in the second phase of the clean living movement. He wrote extensively on science and health. His approach to "biologic living" combined scientific knowledge with Adventist beliefs and the promotion of health reform and temperance. Many of the vegetarian foods that Kellogg developed and offered his patients were publicly marketed: Kellogg's brother, Will Keith Kellogg, is best known today for the invention of the breakfast cereal corn flakes. Kellogg held liberal Christian theological beliefs radically different from mainstream Nicene Christianity and emphasized what he saw as the importance of human reason over many aspects of traditional doctrinal authority. He strongly rejected fundamentalist and conservative notions of original sin, human depravity, and the atonement of Jesus, viewing the last in terms of "his exemplary life" on Earth rather than death. Kellogg was a Seventh-day Adventist (SDA) as the group's beliefs shifted towards Trinitarianism during the 1890s, and Adventists were "unable to accommodate the essentially liberal understanding of Christianity" exhibited by Kellogg, viewing his theology as pantheistic and unorthodox. His disagreements with other members of the SDA Church led to a major schism: he was disfellowshipped in 1907, but continued to adhere to many of the church's beliefs and directed the sanitarium until his death. Kellogg helped to establish the American Medical Missionary College in 1895. Popular misconceptions have wrongly attributed various cultural practices, inventions, and historical events to Kellogg.
Early life
John Harvey Kellogg was born in Tyrone, Michigan, on February 26, 1852, to John Preston Kellogg (1806–1881) and his second wife Ann Janette Stanley (1824–1893). His father, John Preston Kellogg, was born in Hadley, Massachusetts; his ancestry can be traced back to the founding of Hadley, Massachusetts, where a great-grandfather operated a ferry. John Preston Kellogg and his family moved to Michigan in 1834, and after his first wife's death and his remarriage in 1842, to a farm in Tyrone Township. In addition to six children from his first marriage, John Preston Kellogg had 11 children with his second wife Ann, including John Harvey and his younger brother, Will Keith Kellogg. John Preston Kellogg became a member of several revivalist movements, including the Baptists, the Congregationalist Church, and finally the Seventh-day Adventist Church. He was one of four adherents who pledged substantial sums to convince Seventh-day Adventists Ellen G. White and her husband James Springer White to relocate to Battle Creek, Michigan, with their publishing business, in 1855. He persuaded a Seventh-day Adventist couple, Daniel H. Kress and Lauretta E. Kress, to become doctors at Michigan where he had studied; they were early founders of what became Washington Adventist Hospital. In 1856, the Kellogg family moved to Battle Creek to be near other members of the denomination. There John Preston Kellogg established a broom factory. The Kelloggs believed that the Second Coming of Christ was imminent, and that formal education of their children was therefore unnecessary. Originally a sickly child, John Harvey Kellogg attended Battle Creek public schools only briefly, from ages 9–11. He left school to work sorting brooms in his father's broom factory. Nonetheless, he read voraciously and acquired a broad but largely self-taught education. At age 12, John Harvey Kellogg was offered work by the Whites. He became one of their protégés, rising from errand boy to printer's devil, and eventually doing proofreading and editorial work. He helped to set articles for Health, or how to live and The Health Reformer, becoming familiar with Ellen G. White's theories of health, and beginning to follow recommendations such as a vegetarian diet. Ellen White described her husband's relationship with John Harvey Kellogg as closer than that with his own children.
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