Dr. John Harvey Kellogg and the Religion of Biologic Living

<p>Purveyors of spiritualized medicine have been legion in American religious history but few have achieved the superstar status of Dr. John Harvey Kellogg and his Battle Creek Sanitarium. In its heyday the San was a combination spa and Mayo Clinic. Founded in 1866 under the auspices of the Seventh-day Adventist Church and presided over by the charismatic Dr. Kellogg it catered to many well-heeled health seekers including Henry Ford John D. Rockefeller and Presidents Taft and Harding. It also supported a hospital research facilities a medical school a nursing school several health food companies and a publishing house dedicated to producing materials on health and wellness. Rather than focusing on Kellogg as the eccentric creator of corn flakes or a megalomaniacal quack Brian C. Wilson takes his role as a physician and a theological innovator seriously and places his religion of Biologic Living in an on-going tradition of sacred health and wellness. With the fascinating and unlikely story of the San as a backdrop Wilson traces the development of this theology of physiology from its roots in antebellum health reform and Seventh-day Adventism to its ultimate accommodation of genetics and eugenics in the Progressive Era.</p>