Kellogg, John Harvey

1852–1943

American Physician and Health Reformer

John Harvey Kellogg, the most popular health reformer of the late nineteenth century, challenged the notion that meat consumption led to good health and increased sexual vigor in men. Sharing Victorian-era concerns about bodily purity, Kellogg argued that the ideal man abstained from participating in violent acts such as hunting, consumed a vegetable diet to avoid illness and increase physical strength, and sustained his energy through sexual continence (abstinence).

Born in Tyrone, Michigan, Kellogg sought not to attack the medical profession, but to convert physicians to his way of thinking. To gain acceptance by the profession, he became a member of it. He received an M.D. in 1875 and joined the American Medical Association that same year. In 1876, Kellogg became the physician-in-chief of Michigan's Battle Creek Sanitarium, a position that he would hold for the next sixty-seven years. Under Kellogg, the sanitarium became a combination health spa and clinic. He prescribed a program of systematic daily exercise, such as gymnastics or machine-aided activity, to be performed vigorously enough to produce fatigue. He advised men to take daily baths, change their undergarments daily, and wear clothing with porous fibers to allow better penetration of light and air.

Of all the factors necessary to maintain health and strength, Kellogg considered a proper diet to be the most important. Through his many writings, including the popular Home Book of Modern Medicine (1914), Kellogg elaborated upon his belief that the achievement of ideal physical manhood required obedience to natural laws of health. Along with other proponents of “muscular vegetarianism”—part of a broader late-nineteenth-century concern to strengthen American men against the perceived enervating effects of urban-industrial overcivilization—he argued that digestive disorders were the most common human illnesses, and he attacked the consumption of meat as a drain on physical strength. Challenging conventional beliefs that meat consumption led to superior athletic performance, Kellogg argued that vegetarian men were stronger, faster, and more energetic than those who regularly ate meat.

Like many other nineteenth-century health reformers, Kellogg promoted the theory of “spermatic economy.” In Plain Facts About Sexual Life (1884), he warned that sexual excitement drew bodily energy and strength from the brain and other vital organs to the penis and testicles, and he recommended a bland dietary regimen as a way to avoid stimulation. Patients who left the sanitarium often had difficulty preparing grains and cereals to Kellogg's standards, and, while most stopped following his dietary advice, some requested that he make his foods available for mail-order purchase. The resulting Kellogg's food company, best known for its cereals, remains in existence today, long after its founder's death.

While Kellogg helped change American eating habits by providing one of the first convenience foods, his theories of manhood have not withstood the test of time. Unable to overcome age-old beliefs about the power of meat, he failed to persuade large numbers of men to become vegetarian or accept vegetarianism as an essential component of masculinity. His sexual theories also faded amid growing twentieth-century challenges to Victorian sexual attitudes. Still, his attempts to change prevailing notions about men's health and his promotion of physical strength contributed to the growing tendency to define manhood in terms of physical aspects, and Kellogg's cereals continue to be marketed to American boys as necessary to the development of manly strength.

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