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Self Love and Cereal II: Bran Spankin' NewJohn Harvey Kellogg and C.W. Post battle for dominance of the cereal industry and control over human lust. |
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Sylvester Graham had a dream. He didn't want world peace or a better mousetrap. Graham dreamed of a world free of acne and hairy palms. Graham dreamed of a place where nobody masturbated. And he envisioned that the way to do it was by eating a sensible diet. Graham argued that eating vegetables and bland foodstuffs would tame one's fiery loins, and, as you might have read last time, foisted his recommendations on anyone who would listen. People listened. And not just to Graham himself, but also to his disciples, who helped spread the word. One such, James Caleb Jackson, decided that foods existing in nature simply didn't do the job of suppressing lust well enough, so he invented "granula", the world's first cold breakfast cereal. It was hard, lumpy, baked twice, and damn near inedible, but some folks bought it anyway. Jackson hoped granula might be the cornerstone of a diet designed to steer the practitioner away from sexual thoughts, because he figured there was an intimate connection between the genitals and the bowels. They are, in fact, both connected to the body -- any other 'connection' is supposition at best. But medical evidence never got in the way of nineteenth-century reformers. Flaky FollowersJohn Harvey Kellogg, another health nut, had similar ideas. His ideas were so similar that when he invented the world's second cold breakfast cereal and also named it "granula"; he renamed it "granola" only after Jackson took him to court. While these two were business rivals, they shared the same ideology. Kellogg also announced that masturbation caused Urethral inflammation, irritation of the urethra, enlarged prostate, bladder and kidney infection, priapism, piles, prolapse of the rectum, atrophy of the testes, nocturnal emissions and general exhaustion.[1] He insisted that a masturbator could be detected by 39 outwardly visible signs. Among these were changes in disposition, failure of mental capacity ("a child... becomes stupid, forgetful and inattentive"), sleeplessness, "mock piety", lack of breast development in females, use of tobacco, acne, biting of the fingernails, and the "unchastity of speech and fondness for obscene stories," which makes it sound like there were a lot of sarcastic masturbators out there. Drastic Measures [And We Mean Drastic]Clearly, the self-indulgent were troublesome folk, or at least nobody you wanted to sit next to at the family reunion. With such long-lasting, persnickety symptoms, merely changing one's diet might not banish them. Kellogg anticipated this possibility by suggesting alternate, more drastic methods. He wrote, "Bandaging the parts has been practiced with success. Tying the hands is also successful in some cases... Covering the organs with a cage has been practiced with entire success."[2] Circumcision was another remedy; the theory went that if the youngster's parts were sensitive during a sensitive developmental period it might affect his habits in the future. For those unwilling to go that route, one could always sew the foreskin together over the head of the penis: The prepuce, or foreskin, is drawn over the glans, and the needle to which the wire is attached is passed through from one side to the other. After drawing the wire through, the ends are twisted together, and cut off loose. It is now impossible for an erection to occur.[3] That might do the trick. Lest one think females are let off the hook more easily, carbolic acid, today known as phenol, was liberally applied to their genitals in an effort to ward off the evil. Contrast this to women who were diagnosed with "hysteria", who instead were masturbated to orgasm by their own physicians. It was oolhardy for a woman to masturbate and risk genital mutilation when she could fake a hysterical episode and have a strapping young doctor do it for her, but few patients made that creative leap.
Instead, the whole idea of pleasure was suppressed. Home inventors took to their workshops to create various chastity belts and other devices to prevent their youngsters from self-abuse. These might employ locks, or, worse, barbs that pricked aroused tissues. At least twenty patents for such contraptions were issued from 1856 to 1917.[4] Kellogg, while not an inventor himself but certainly a killjoy, surely lauded such developments. Lavage-o-rama!Stern taskmaster Kellogg became a widely known and respected medical lecturer. The patients at his clinic, the Western Reform Health Institute, underwent rigorous treatment. Cereal historians Scott Bruce and Bill Crawford paint a vivid picture: Kellogg put his patients through their paces. They performed calesthenics at 7 AM, followed by laughing exercises, Indian club demonstrations, and gymnastic classes. They withstood all manner of mechanical massage -- pummelings with trunk rollers, poundings with chest beaters, and punches from stomach beaters. They stood on vibrating platforms to stimulate their inner organs, galloped on mechanical horses, or sat on Kellogg's patented vibrating chair. They bathed endlessly inside and out -- with salt baths, steam baths, hot water baths, cold-water baths, showers, douches, fomentations, and a high-powered enema machine that could put fifteen gallons of water through the bowels in a matter of minutes. We here at History House shudder at the idea of a high-powered enema (it was followed by a health dose of yogurt inserted in both ends), but the idea probably excited Kellogg. The man practiced what he preached and never consummated his marriage, preferring instead to receive an enema from an orderly every morning after breakfast. He spent his honeymoon writing Plain Facts for Old and Young, a treatise on the evils of sexuality. He sung praises to yogurt as a food and enema ingredient, noting that the bacilli therein preserved any sort of tissue. To prove this point, he had a large bowl of fresh yogurt that he gestured to as he talked, and heaved out a fresh-looking T-bone steak out of it. He used the same hunk of meat for the lecture for seventeen years, at which point it was accidentally discarded by a kitchen worker. However, nobody got to eat that lonely steak. So bland and unexciting was the nourishment at the Institute that a nearby restaurant, the Red Onion, flourished as a kind of clandestine carnivore speakeasy where patients would steal away in the night to enjoy the odd forbidden pork chop. Cereal Competitors, If Not KillersEven as patients gagged down their tasteless meals, a seed was sown that would grow into the mighty breakfast industry. One C. W. Post went to Kellogg's healthcare empire at the end of the nineteenth century, and, like a lot of other patients, had stomach difficulties. When Kellogg was unable to help him, Post started his own sanitarium instead in 1892; this one that gave free license to eat meat. It was across town from Kellogg's own place in comparatively isolated Battle Creek, Michigan, and, as a cheaper and arguably more enjoyable place than Kellogg's, thrived.
Not so much interested in stopping self-abuse as lining his own pockets, Post also invented "Postum", which was a coffee substitute comprised mainly of roasted chicory, and it sold like hotcakes. He was a brilliant advertiser, and created fictional medical professionals to laud his products. These entities claimed that coffee caused "...divorces, business failures, factory accidents, juvenile delinquency, traffic accidents, fire or home foreclosures..." and a variety of other ailments. By convincing a gullible public that coffee was a health hazard, Post made a fortune. Rather than sit on his laurels, he used these profits to invent and promote Grape-Nuts. Inexplicably, this rocklike cereal captured the imagination of breakfast eaters everywhere. Never one to waste an opportunity to get on a soapbox, Post and included a 12-page pamphlet entitled, "The Road to Wellville" with every box [it was subsequently the title of a terrible movie]. All Chaff And No WheatIn a small village like Battle Creek, competitors Kellogg and Post quietly seethed at one another and slung lawsuits over the course of an entire generation. Their divergent gustatory styles clashed at every turn, and they traded dirty looks from across the street whenever they passed. The town wasn't big enough for the both of them, but for some reason it had to be the health food epicenter for the nation. Within its tiny borders, two breakfast giants waged war against one another and with their own companies. Kellogg's brother, William, essentially stole the company from his sibling, which then grew into the looming cereal giant we all know and fear today. Kellogg never wavered from his view that masturbation was damaging and deadly, even though he lived until 1943. Post's company ballooned into General Foods, but didn't change its view that his original coffee substitute's alleged physiological merits until 1951, when it was forced to knuckle under to the FTC's accusations of false claims. Aside from the aforementioned fake doctors, at one point Postum was touted as a cure for appendicitis. Obviously, the two men deserved each other. And while Post was ideologically separate from the antimasturbatory diet Kellog espoused, there's a clear thread connecting it from Graham to Jackson to Kellogg. Given the strong case connecting Graham, cold cereals, and rabid hatred for self-abuse, you'd think the cereal Golden Grahams might well be the capstone to this journey at the breakfast table. Not so: Golden Grahams are the product of affable General Mills, which had nothing to do whatsoever with these kooks. Not only that, but the cereal itself wasn't even invented until 1974, and by that time, well, masturbation was pretty much in vogue. FootnotesBibliography
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 ©1996-2007 History House Inc.All Rights Reserved. |
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