The great Battle Creek Sanitarium, under the inspiration and direction
of Dr. J. H. Kellogg, has grown to enormous proportions in thirty-seven
years. It began with one patient in a two-storey frame house in a
country village, and has been largely influential in creating the
present proud distinction of Battle Creek, Michigan, with its millions
upon millions of invested industrial capital.
The "cure" is based upon the establishment in the patient of right
nutrition, right functioning of the bodily organs and secretions, and
thereby assisting Nature to perform the cure in a natural manner. Pure
foods and other conditions of right nutrition have been the particular
study of the institution staff, and large and finely furnished chemical
and bacteriological laboratories have been installed for the study of
nutrition in a scientific manner.
The Battle Creek Sanitarium is a purely humanitarian and philanthropic
institution. By perpetual charter, all of the profits of the concern in
all of its ramifications are dedicated to the extension of the American
Medical Missionary Cause, and there have been already established more
than sixty branches of the parent institution in different parts of the
world, principally in or near the chief cities of America, and all are
occupied with saving and regenerating the physical body of the sick as
a foundation for possible moral awakening and spiritual cultivation.
The work done by these humanitarian institutions is most practical, and
the best evidence of the practicality is their growth. Patients are
charged what they can conveniently pay, but none who need are refused
attention. Branches are made self-supporting as soon as possible,
but are first nurtured by the parent sanitarium. There are some
hundreds of physicians, nurses, and other attachés of the different
institutions, and these are enthusiasts in the humanitarian work,
taking as wages only what they need for most economical support, "a
mere pittance," and deriving their chief compensation from satisfaction
gained in the service. All in all, it is an expression of inspirational
altruism worthy of the example of the Good Samaritan and a practical
demonstration of the Sermon on the Mount.
The special attention of the writer was called to the work of the
Battle Creek Sanitarium organisation by an American banker, Edwin C.
Nichols, Esquire, in London, at the time of the last Coronation. The
banker was conversant with the growth and methods of the Sanitarium,
and had seen the result of its missionary and sanitary work. He
exacted a promise from the writer to visit Battle Creek on his first
opportunity, and Mr. Nichols has our everlasting gratitude for leading
us to a more intimate acquaintance with so splendid an illustration
of humanitarian possibilities when properly directed. It is not alone
the great Sanitarium and its hospitals, and clinics, and shelters, and
refuges, and baths, and reading-rooms, that are doing the greatest
possible good work, in demonstrating their effective Christianity;
but it is the private waif-family of Dr. and Mrs. Kellogg which shows
what neglected children are capable of when given a chance, and which
appeals to the author especially as giving support to his ideal of a
possible effective _Social Quarantine_ as presented in his book, "That
Last Waif." Twenty-four neglected and sick children of unfortunate
parents have been rescued from an almost hopeless condition, and have
been adopted into the best of surroundings and culture, all promising
to become splendid wealth-productive citizens and ornaments to society.
For more than a year Dr. Kellogg and his staff of earnest workers have
been testing the suggestions offered in "Glutton or Epicure," and in
the treatise of Dr. Van Someren, and appreciation of these suggestions
and the work that has since been done to stimulate interest in the
question in high scientific circles will be found in some extracts from
Dr. Kellogg's letters which the author has received permission to print
herewith.
"BATTLE CREEK, MICH., Nov. 26, 1902.
"DEAR MR. FLETCHER:
"I have your kind note of November 20th. Thank you very much for your
appreciative words. Your visit here was a great inspiration to all of
us. It is not often we find a man who enters into the things which
we love so heartily as you have done. The thing that interested us
especially was the fact that you are the founder of a new and wonderful
movement, which is bound to do far more for the advancement of the
principles for which we are working than all that we have done or
anything we can do. I shall await with great interest the development
of your work and shall expect to receive great light from your efforts.
We are all in training to find our reflexes, and are expecting to make
a great deal out of this."
"BATTLE CREEK, MICH., Dec. 21, 1902.
"MY DEAR FRIEND:
"I have received the beautiful book which you sent me, 'That Last
Waif, or Social Quarantine.' It is a charming volume. I devoured it
eagerly, and I find myself in the position of an eager disciple
sitting at the feet of a master. Your ideas of social regeneration
strike deeper than those of any other modern author, and I shall
be glad to coöperate with you in any way possible in promulgating
these principles. You have made your book talk in a most impressive
way. From cover to cover it is simply admirable and must do a world
of good. I shall write a little notice of it for my journal, _Good
Health_.
"Again thanking you for this interesting volume, I remain,
"Most sincerely and respectfully
yours,
"J. H. KELLOGG."
"BATTLE CREEK, MICH., Jan. 22, 1903.
"DEAR FRIEND:
"I have shamefully neglected you. I want to assure you how much I
appreciate your encouraging notes. I read them to my colleagues, and
they were so much affected that tears came into their eyes. I assure
you we feel that you are indeed a brother to us in our work, and
that God has providentially sent you to be a friend to us and to the
principles which we represent.
"I had a letter from Dr. Haig a few days ago in which he mentioned
you and your work, and said he was much interested in it. Dr. Haig,
you know, has done a great deal in calling attention to uric acid in
meats and other foods. His work has not all been accepted by great
laboratory men, but Dr. Hall, of Owen's Medical College in Manchester,
has recently reinforced his results. I have at different times
repeated his experiments with interesting results.
"I assure you we shall be glad to receive any suggestions from any
scientific authority who may visit us, and if there is any part of our
work which can be improved, we shall be glad to put it there as soon
as our attention is called to it.
"Again thanking you for your kindly interest in our work, I remain,
"Most sincerely yours,
"J. H. KELLOGG."
"BATTLE CREEK, MICH., Feb. 22, 1903.
"MY DEAR FRIEND:
"I have yours of January 29th. I am much interested in what you write
about your demonstration at New Haven. I want to give the widest
publicity possible to your work. I find great good in it. I am talking
to my patients continually about it. I know from my experience that
you are right. For many years I have required my patients to give
special attention to chewing, and have made it a written prescription
for each patient to chew a saucerful of dry granose flakes at the
beginning of each meal. I have seen great good from this method.
"With kindest regards, I remain, as ever,
"Most sincerely yours,
"J. H. KELLOGG."
"BATTLE CREEK, MICH., March 16, 1903.
"DEAR FRIEND:
"I am exceedingly interested in the facts which you communicate,
especially Dr. Anderson's report. It is quite remarkable. I am
verifying the same ideas in my own personal experience. I am confident
you have discovered a great and important principle and I shall watch
with interest future developments. I am going to get our students
interested in it. If you feel disposed to do so, I shall be glad to
have you make out a little line of experiments which will tally with
the experiments which you have been conducting, so the results may be
compared.
"I have in hand a translation of Cornaro's work which I have been
thinking of publishing. It occurred to me that perhaps you would be
able to write a little chapter for this work, or an introduction. I am
going to get it out in nice shape, and I trust it may be the means of
doing good in inclining those who read it toward a simpler life. I
am greatly interested in the ideas which you present in your various
books.
"I hope you will have a safe journey to Italy and back.
"I remain, as ever,
"Very sincerely and respectfully
yours,
"J. H. KELLOGG."
"BATTLE CREEK, MICH., March 22, 1903.
"MY DEAR MR. FLETCHER:
"I have yours of March 19th. I thank you very much for promising to
write an introduction for the edition of Luigi Cornaro's life. You
are just the man to do it. I propose to get the book out in neat,
tasty shape. Shall be glad to have suggestions from you on this point.
The manager of a large denominational publishing house in Chicago is
interested and wants to publish it with us. He has promised to help
about the artistic features.
"As regards our medical college, I ought to have told you that we
are incorporated in the State of Illinois. Our medical school is
really legally located in Chicago. We always have one or more classes
down there for dissection, clinical work, and doing dispensary and
missionary work in the city. Our school is officially recognised. Our
diplomas are recognised in this country and in most foreign countries;
our diplomas are recognised, in fact, in all countries which recognise
American diplomas. The work done in our school is recognised by the
best schools. Jefferson accepts students from our third year into
their fourth, the graduating year, without examination. Kings College
in Kingston, Canada, does the same; also Trinity College in Toronto,
and other leading schools in this country. Our College is a member
of the American Medical Association along with Bellevue, University
of Pennsylvania, University of Michigan, Rush Medical College, and
other leading schools. We have placed our standard high so that no
one could object to the reform features of our work on account of
incompetency. Our students are admitted to practice in New York,
having passed the examinations of the State Board. Our best reason
for believing that our diplomas are recognised everywhere is because
of students from the College having passed the examinations in
nearly every State. One of our students recently graduated from the
University of Dublin after having spent a year there, as they require
five years instead of four years as with us.
"Your experiments are surpassingly interesting. Your performance
with Dr. Anderson was phenomenal. I confess you are a physiological
puzzle. If chewing accomplishes these wonderful things for you, it
is certainly worth the while. I am training myself from day to day
to masticate my food more and more thoroughly and I confess there is
greater good in it than I ever imagined.
"I am sending you a little box of foods that I think you will like,
especially the protose roast, the gluten biscuit, and the chocolates.
"I would like to get hold of a list of your books; I want to put them
into the hands of our students to read. Kindly give me a list of the
names and the publishers and I will esteem it a favour.
"I might have said further in reference to our College that it is
listed by the New York Board of Regents as well as by the Illinois
State Board of Health. We are going to make considerable improvement
in our school the next year. We are trying to put up a new building.
We need $100,000 very much, as our work has no endowment and it
requires very great sacrifice and most strenuous effort to keep it
going. Our teachers work for a mere pittance and our students are
compelled to save and economise in every way to get through. Nearly
all of them have to pay their way in work of some sort.
"By the way, I am taking liberty to send you with this, copies of some
little booklets which I have just gotten out in reference to our work.
"I am, as ever,
"Your friend,
"J. H. KELLOGG."
"BATTLE CREEK, MICH., June 24, 1903.
"MY DEAR FRIEND:
"I have your kind note of June 21st. I am happy to be remembered by
you tho I have neglected writing you. I was afraid my letter would not
find you on your journeys.
"We are chewing hard out here at Battle Creek, chewing more every
day. We are continually thinking and talking of you and the wonderful
reform you set going. We have gotten up a little 'chewing song' which
we sing to the patients. It is only doggerel but it helps to keep the
idea before our people. We dedicated it to you and I am going to send
you a copy of it as soon as the printers get it ready. If you feel
too much disgraced I will take your name off.
"That little book on 'Cornaro' is not out yet. We have been waiting
for the introduction from you. We can wait as much longer as is
necessary, as you are the man to furnish this introduction.
"I hope you will come West some time this summer so you can drop in
and see us in our new building. We are not quite in perfect running
order yet, but we shall soon be fixed in good shape and will be
delighted to have you with us. You have helped us greatly in calling
our attention to the great importance of chewing. We had known it for
a long time but had not practised it. You demonstrated the thing in
such a graphic way that the whole world is constrained to listen.
"Thanking you for your kind note,
"I remain, very sincerely yours,
"J. H. KELLOGG."
"BATTLE CREEK, MICH., July 23, 1903.
"MY DEAR MR. FLETCHER:
"I have your kind favour of July 14. You are doing me altogether too
much honour. I am only a plodding, humble doctor, and have never
had any opportunity to do any great thing, because of the limits of
my abilities, and because I have not the opportunity to devote my
energies to any one special thing; but have so many things to do that
I can do nothing very well.
"I remember Dr. Krauss very well. He has for some years been assistant
to Prof. Winternitz, the Professor of Nerve Diseases in the Medical
Department of the Royal and Imperial University of Austria. He seemed
a very able physician and a delightful gentleman. I was very glad to
meet him.
"I have already sent you a copy of a little booklet entitled 'The
Building of a Temple of Health.'
"We will be most happy to have a visit from you. I would like to know
about what time you are coming, and I will endeavour to be here. I
have a call to give an address at Chautauqua, N. Y., early in August,
and if I do not know when you will be here, I might possibly be away,
which I should consider a great misfortune.
"We have nothing here, I am sure, which will be new to scientific men,
and I apprehend that they will have a very different opinion of our
work than you have.
"I have a little book which I think I have not sent you, entitled 'The
Living Temple.' I will send a copy to you; also a copy of the 'Chewing
Song,' which is now out. It is nothing but a cheap thing, intended
only for my own little folks; but it got out, and several people
wanted it, so I have allowed it to be put in print. The purpose was,
of course, simply to impress the chewing idea. Of course you are well,
as you are apt to be well by chewing well.
"By the way, I met a disciple of yours a day or two ago. He was
Senator Burrows, from Kalamazoo. He called with his wife and some
other ladies, and Mr. Rose, the chief clerk of the U. S. Senate, to
make us a little visit. I had a very delightful chat with them. On
remarking to the Senator that he did not look any older than when
I saw him last, but seemed to be very well, he told me he was in
perfect health, and he expected to live for ever. He had recently
gotten hold of something that was doing him so much good that he
believed he should never be sick. I begged to know his secret, and
found it was chewing. I asked him how he discovered it, and he told
me he had learned it from your delightful book. You are certainly
promoting the most important hygienic reform which has been brought
forward in modern times. When you visit us again, you will see in our
dining-room of our new building more Horace Fletcher disciples, and
more hard chewers than you ever saw together in one place in your
life before. Our doctors and helpers are taking hold of it with great
enthusiasm, and I trust we shall be able to render you some good
service in promoting this good idea, for which you certainly deserve
the gratitude of the whole world.
"Hoping to have the pleasure of a visit from you soon, I remain, as
ever,
"Yours most sincerely and respectfully,
"J. H. KELLOGG."
"BATTLE CREEK, MICH., Aug. 13, 1903.
"DEAR FRIEND:
"Your kind notes of August 7th and 11th received. I have asked the
Publishing Department to open an account with you and send you
everything you order promptly at publisher's discount.
"'The Living Temple' is published for the benefit of the Sanitarium.
Everything received from it goes toward paying for the new building.
The cost of printing, paper, and binding is paid for by contributions,
so all the money received goes toward the building fund for the
Sanitarium. I hope by this and other means to get the building paid
for before I die.
"I think your chewing reform is of more importance to the world than
you realise. You must have a great fund of good cheer with you;
doubtless because you chew! I told our patients here that I had heard
from you that King Edward was chewing. It interested and amused them
very greatly. The idea of 'munching parties' is a good one.
"As ever,
"Your friend,
"J. H. KELLOGG."
"BATTLE CREEK, MICH., August 21, 1903.
"DEAR MR. FLETCHER:
"I have yours of August 20th with the list of persons to whom you
desire to have 'The Living Temple' sent. The books are already sent
together with a little note calling attention to them.
"Your continued courtesies are putting us under obligations which we
can never repay.
"There are a lot of devils of different sorts to be cast out, and I am
sure the dyspeptic devil is about the worst and the meanest of them
all.
"A quartette sang the 'Chewing Song' just before my lecture in the
parlour last evening. The great parlour was filled to its utmost
capacity. The people cheered heartily, not at the singing nor the
song, but the sentiment. I took occasion to tell them I thought Mr.
Horace Fletcher, in inaugurating the chewing reform, had done more to
help suffering humanity than any other man of the present generation,
and that I felt very much mortified that we had neglected this
important matter to such an extent here that you had to come to the
Sanitarium and be a missionary of good health and urge this important
matter upon our attention. I feel that we are all greatly indebted to
you, and seem to be getting continually more and more into your debt,
and I do not know any way to discharge the obligation; but if any
accident should ever happen to you so you get ill, it will certainly
be a delight to us to have the opportunity to minister to you if you
will permit us so to do.
"I am glad you have postponed your visit until October, as by that
time we shall have many things in better working order, and our
medical class will be here. I want to have our medical students meet
you.
"I told Mr. Nichols the other day you were coming to visit us. He was
greatly delighted to hear this. He feels as I do that the work which
you have inaugurated is the most important movement which has been
started in modern times.
"I remain, as ever,
"Fraternally yours,
"J. H. KELLOGG."
"BATTLE CREEK, MICH., Sept. 30, 1903.
"DEAR FRIEND:
"I have your kind note of the 23d inst. I am sure that one of my
letters to you has been lost. I wrote promptly telling you that you
were at liberty to use anything I have written you respecting your
work.
"I am more and more enthusiastic respecting the value of thorough
chewing. I have read with great interest Dr. Harry Campbell's
articles, and am republishing in _Modern Medicine_ a large part of
what he has written.
"I have been thinking whether I might dare ask permission from you to
publish your article 'What Sense' as a tract. Possibly it is already
printed in that way. I would like to circulate it widely among my
patients, and our nurses and doctors. I am doing my best to get them
all to chewing, and have had great benefit myself from thorough
mastication.
"Our Medical School has just begun again, and I have one nice class
of sixteen students who are going to devote themselves to the study
of applied physiology, and all of them will experiment on the effects
of thorough mastication in relation to the quantity of food; also in
relation to the quantity of proteids. If you would like the details of
the results of the experiments, I will give them to you later.
"By the way, if you have any written or printed outline of data which
you think it desirable to collect, I will be glad to have it as a help
to us in researches of this sort. We have prepared our laboratory to
do almost anything that needs to be done, and we have a whole lot of
enthusiastic young men and women who will enter into this thing with
great zeal, and we will be glad to coöperate with you thoroughly as
I feel that you have introduced a line of research and investigation
which is of immense importance. I have read with great interest Prof.
Chittenden's article in the _Popular Science Monthly_, and I can but
feel that you are a heaven-sent missionary to the world in this matter
of diet reform.
"I remain,
"As ever your friend,
"J. H. KELLOGG."
"P. S.--I have for many years given a good deal of attention to the
matter of mastication. It has been my regular prescription for all
my patients for many years to eat at the beginning of each meal some
Granose Flakes. The purpose of this was to secure increased activity
of the salivary glands, and to encourage the habit of mastication. I
have found immense benefit from this practice.
"I appreciate exceedingly all the good things you are sending me. What
a delightful time you must have had in the Adirondacks! I have never
had such a pleasure in my life, as I have had my nose continually
on the grindstone at work since I was ten years of age, with no
vacations at all. It is a remarkable spectacle that these great men,
these learned professors and scientists, and army medical men, should
be coöperating so enthusiastically with a layman to learn the true
philosophy of life; but it has always been so. The great discoveries
have not been made by great scientists and great doctors, but by men
whose minds were above the bias of prescribed education, and who were
able to learn from the great book of nature, which is the book of God.
"When you come again I hope you will have time to stay with us a
little while so we can have some good chats. I would like to sit down
and go into the heart of things with you, when I think we should find
our ideas running very close together. We shall expect to see you next
month. I have to be away for a few days sometime during the month, so
I hope you will let me know a little while before you come about what
time to expect you.
"J. H. K."