implemented a six-hour day in his
colossal cereal factory as a stratagem
to alleviate unemployment in Battle
Creek.
Charles William Post (1854-1914),
an inventor and businessman, was a
patient at the Kellogg sanitarium. He
viewed cereals and coffee substitutes
as health products and promoted
them via consumer advertising. He
developed the dried cereal Grape Nuts
which he claimed was a ‘brain food’
that could also cure tuberculosis. He
was also the developer of Postum, a
cereal-based coffee substitute.
Each of those men believed that
health could be achieved and
maintained only through the proper
use of food and the equally important
issue of elimination.
Dr Kellogg was particularly given
to the use of enemas to cleanse
the bowels. He cautioned against
the habitual use of laxatives and
believed that laxative abuse increased
constipation instead of curing it.
As a remedy for dry, hard stool, he
recommended the use of ‘Neptune’s
girdle’; or ‘wet abdomen’. That process
included the bed-time routine of
placing, on the patient’s abdomen,
a towel that had been soaked in
cold water, wrung out, and covered
with dry flannel. The patient was
then wrapped in the flannel covered
towel, which provided warmth
overnight. The towel was removed
the next morning, and the patient
was instructed to ‘dip the hand in
cold water and percuss the bowels
very thoroughly for five minutes.
Go to stool within a half hour after
breakfast. Have a regular time.’
In TC Boyle’s novel The Road to
Wellville, one of the characters is
introduced to the Battle Creek
Sanitarium, where bowel health and
hygiene are emphasised:
‘We’re going to start you out for the
first three days on psyllium seeds and
hijiki (a type of Japanese seaweed).
The psyllium is hygroscopic, it absorbs
water and will expand in your stomach,
scouring you out as it passes through
you just as surely as if a tiny army of
janitors were down there equipped
with tiny scrub brushes. The same with
the hijiki – perfectly indigestible. Like
eating a broom –- but that broom –-
will sweep you clean.
Other physicians used a broad range
of medicines to cause evacuation
of the bowels. Those remedies were
divided into five groups according to
the action and thoroughness desired.
Laxatives provided the gentlest
action. Mild cathartics were used for
thorough bowel cleansing without
irritation. Cholagogue cathartics
acted on the liver by increasing bile
secretion. Hydragogue cathartics
produced large volumes of watery
discharge, and irritant cathartics
produced a vigorous evacuation of
the bowels.