Biologic Living and Rhetorical Pathology: The Case of John Harvey Kellogg and Fred Newton Scott (Biography‪)‬

Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, inventor of breakfast cereal, world-renowned medical surgeon, and health guru to thousands during the first half of the twentieth century, is an understandably eccentric character in T. Coraghessan Boyle's The Road to Wellville. The real Kellogg was an odd conglomeration: alternatively a man of science, a medical and wellness pioneer, a prolific author, an inventor of what might best be described as health and wellness devices, a teacher and lecturer, a socialite, an influential (and obsessive) leader in the temperance movement, and a reformer who shared in the American progressive movement. And he had more than a few eccentricities, among them his habit of dressing from head to toe in white for supposed health reasons. Boyle's novel, as well as the 1994 film adaptation starring Anthony Hopkins, emphasizes Kellogg's oddities which appear more pronounced some 60 years following his death. But the case has been made that Kellogg's legacy includes more than breakfast cereal, posture chairs and hydrotherapies. According to biographer Richard W. Schwarz, "Kellogg was a man who changed many of America's eating habits, who contributed to an awareness of the relationship between many 'common' and 'simple' habits and personal health and physical well-being, [and] who was an early proponent of what today is called 'preventive medicine.'" (1) Kellogg was also a renowned gastrointestinal surgeon, sharing professional friendships with Will and Charles Mayo, who both visited the Battle Creek Sanitarium to observe Kellogg's surgical techniques. (2) Additionally, Kellogg was a prolific author, writing numerous books and editing a number of magazines and medical journals, and he was almost perpetually involved in some form of education for his entire career, particularly medical training for health professionals. (3)