Cereal abuser?

Following on from my last post, I was surfing around concerning fundamental Christians and I alighted upon the entry in Wikipedia of John Harvey Kellogg, the inventor of corn flakes. One thing I always knew about Kellogg was that he came from Battle Creek, Michigan. This was because idle reading at the breakfast table told me so as it was on the carton. Idle reading has now got me thinking about Kellogg himself.

He was not just a cereal maker but a man who felt obliged to look after the moral degredation of others as he saw it. As a doctor he was more taken by the bowels and the sexual organs than mere corn flakes alone. In fact I would say that he was a tad flaky all round. He was a Seventh Day Adventist (which is how I came upon Kellogg in the surfing) but he took anything they said a step or two further.

He seemed to think that eating well and aiding your digestion kept sexual stimulation at bay. He should have met Dr Ruth! "Vat iss it viv you? You are so unhealthily obsessed, you are!" She'd have run rings round him. The medical Dr.Kellogg was obsessed. He was an advocate of sexual abstinence. He was a crusader against "self-abuse". He wrote Treatment for Self-Abuse and Its Effects. I wonder how many were traumatised by his stern lectures. He stated "A remedy for masturbation which is almost always successful in small boys is circumcision. The operation should be performed by a surgeon without administering an anesthetic, as the brief pain attending the operation will have a salutary effect upon the mind, especially if it be connected with the idea of punishment. In females, the author has found the application of pure carbolic acid [phenol] to the clitoris an excellent means of allaying the abnormal excitement."

Isn't it rich! A man who professed some belief in God purports to cause pain and suffering to God's handiwork. It never occurred to him that God thought all this out and found it to be perfect. Even today, American doctors are following his advice and coining the cash with such operations. And I doubt very much if the circumcised of America have abstained from masturbation!

Kellogg wrote another book entitled Plain Facts for Old and Young which outlined his beliefs. Hardly facts! It is apparent that those who are zealots for a cause are blind to the facts.

Kellogg was a "cereal abuser" of the facts!

Posted in: circumcision,fundamentalism,John Harvey Kellogg,USA