Medicine: Two Kelloggs

Two grown brothers took to scrapping a score or so years ago. They were quite alike, these two Kellogg boys, of Battle Creek, Mich.—both alert, energetic, farseeing, both good publicists. One, John Harvey—Dr. John Harvey— had recently invented his famed ready-cooked flaked cereals as a new form of food. Both knew the huge money possibilities of the new idea. But they differed inalterably on the disposition of earnings. John Harvey, a young doctor full of altruistic educational plans, considered the private accumulation of such gains unethical. Not so, Brother W. K. This one foresaw for himself independent wealth, private estates, gentlemanly diversions. They went to court. For almost a quarter-million dollars Brother W. K. bought from Brother Dr. John Harvey the rights to commercialize certain flaked foods already devised. John Harvey Kellogg slapped the sum into the funds of his various educational works, for which he has become world famed.

Last week the press brought news of Brother W. K. Kellogg out of the quietude of his life. He is Chairman of the Board of the Kellogg Co., huge foodmakers with a working capital in 1925 of $2,384,527; successor of the old Kellogg Toasted Corn Flake Co.; owner of the Battle Creek Toasted Flake Co. of London, Ont.; builder in 1924 of a $400,000 plant in Battle Creek; owner of plants in London, Ont., and Sydney, Australia; recent buyer of a plant of the Quaker Oats Co. and another of the Purity Oats Co.; owner of interests in the Kellogg Co. of Great Britain. And he has an estate, out in California, near Pomona, where among other activities he breeds Arabian horses. Last week he was reported about to send an expedition to Arabia to bring back a herd of 9 to 15 horses, which he will attempt to reproduce in native strains. Through the administration of another Kellogg, Secretary of State Frank Billings Kellogg, he was arranging the safe-conduct of his party.

Such private activities Brother Dr. John Harvey Kellogg glances at in his quick, comprehending fashion, then looks aside to his medical, surgical, educational, inventive, publishing and research organizations, of which he is the driving force.

Some 63 years ago this small man, now stocky with his 73 years of alert living and thinking, was squatting, a puny, untutored boy, on the back stoop of his Battle Creek home. Chin cupped in hands, he was pondering on what to make of himself, and as the kaleidoscope of boyish day dreams passed across his fancy, he pictured himself standing in the open door of a schoolhouse, beckoning to enter a long file of dirty, unkempt children. This vision, he has said, “gave me the idea of my life work. I must prepare to give a chance to children who had no chance.”

This ideal of education and welldoing, as all the world knows, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg has followed with rare assiduity, with an amazing versatility of means. The retelling of these sounds like the staccato popping of a high speed motor.

At 9 years he had had no schooling because his parents, in Battle Creek, believed the world was about to come to an end and education therefore useless. But at 12, while the Civil War proceeded, he got a full winter’s schooling because a local printer-preacher persuaded the parents that “if the Lord was going to come soon and end the world, He would be more pleased if He found the children in school.” At 15 this boy, always on the jump, had been a broom maker, printer’s devil, practically editor of the local paper. Next year he was teaching school and attending Michigan State Normal College. A brother, studying medicine, suggested his doing likewise, against an earlier disinclination. He got his M. D. from Bellevue Hospital Medical College (N. Y. University) in 1875. While studying in 1873, the old Battle Creek hydriatic establishment, a sort of water cure with a few patients, gave him the editorship of its house organ, Good Health Magazine. This the young student medic revamped, invigorated, has kept going until now it is called the oldest health magazine in existence.

Just out of school he wrote Plain Facts, supposed to be the first of the long line of popular, yet sincere, books on sex facts. At the Philadelphia Centennial in 1876 he organized a health exhibit. A few months later the Battle Creek water cure put itself under his direction. He mused for a striking, descriptive name; created “sanitarium.”*

In 1879 he paused to marry her who was Ella E. Eaton, raised in Alfred Center, N. Y. Together this couple have taken into their home in Battle Creek 42 youngsters; of them have legally adopted 13; have instructed all, and sent them to universities.

In Battle Creek Dr. Kellogg once had an irritating patient, a woman who broke her false teeth on a piece of zwieback he had prescribed; wanted him to give her $10 for a new set. She irritated him into thinking up some twice-cooked food not so hard. Shortly, after letting his brain play with the idea, he boiled some whole wheat, ran the grains through a dough-rolling machine Mrs. Kellogg had in the kitchen; baked in the oven the flattened grains; got his first ready-cooked flaked cereal. (However, this was not the first “breakfast food.”) This unintegrated biscuit was digestible, especially good for certain ailments. He experimented with other grains; sold the rights to some processes to his brother. In all he has devised 60 different forms of cereal, each of which he considers ideal for some human malaise. He even runs a little factory near his home where he turns out what he wants.

To return to his accomplishments, in 1893 at the Chicago World’s Fair he noted an inordinate number of “bummers” and down-and-outers. So he organized a mission, got it publicity, helped out the poor devils suffering from the prevalent panic. In Chicago too he organized a medical school, whose students had to pledge themselves to practice, for five years after graduation, without fee or else as medical missionaries. This school is now merged with the University of Illinois. In 1902 his Battle Creek sanitarium was burned out. He rebuilt at once, going heavily into debt.

From all his activities Dr. Kellogg has perhaps earned more money than his wealthy brother. He gets $1,500 yearly for devising the “daily dozen” phonograph records; the money educates two girls. The royalties of his 20 books, from his many surgical inventions, the fees from some 15,000 surgical operations and 277,000 patients in the sanitarium, all his income except a bare living have gone to support his lifelong doctrine of “not doctoring, not surgery, but education.” He supports the Race Betterment Foundation, of which he is founder and president; the Battle Creek College which he created out of his sanitarium dietetic and nursing classes.

These things Dr. Kellogg tells you in his quiet, quick voice. His little white goatee flicks his sincerity at you; so too his gentle eyes back of his darkly rimmed spectacles. He likes, too, to recall how he was a member of the Michigan State Board of Health under four governors; that he is the oldest living member of the American Public Health Association; that he likes to do hard things for mental exercise.

* This New Latin word means an “establishment to educate people how to keep well.” A “sanatorium” is an establishment for treating specific diseases or for applying particular remedies.