The Battle Creek Sanitarium in Battle Creek, Michigan, United States, was a health resort based on the health principles advocated by the Seventh-day Adventist Church, most notably associated with John Harvey Kellogg. The complex was purchased by the U.S. Army during World War II and converted into the Percy Jones Army Hospital. The facility later became the Hart-Dole-Inouye Federal Center.
History
Battle Creek Sanitarium Battle Creek, MI (The good old days) - About three weeks ago I added this video add had to take it off because of copyright laws on the music. I have changed the music to a royalty free music. So here it is once again.
It first opened on September 5, 1866, as the Western Health Reform Institute. In 1876, John Harvey Kellogg became the superintendent, and his brother, W. K. Kellogg, worked as the bookkeeper. In 1878, a new structure was built on the site, which burned down in 1902, and then rebuilt and enlarged. As Kellogg put it, they took the word "sanatorium", which back then was defined as a health resort for invalid soldiers. "A change of two letters transformed 'sanatorium' to 'sanitarium', and a new word was added to the English language". Kellogg states the number of patients grew from 106 in 1866, to 7,006 patrons during the year 1906. In 1928, Battle Creek Sanitarium expanded with a fourteen-story tower, built across the street from the main sanitarium. This tower went into receivership in 1933, while the sanitarium continued to operate from its main facility. In 1942, the U. S. Army purchased the tower and established the Percy Jones General Hospital; the hospital closed permanently in 1953 and one year later became the Battle Creek Federal Center. Owned by the Seventh-day Adventists, the Battle Creek Sanitarium continued to operate as a psychiatric facility through the 1970s but closed its doors by the end of the decade. In 1986, the main building was razed, ending the final chapter in the history of the Battle Creek Sanitarium. Medical records have since been microfiched and are now kept by the nearby Fieldstone Center, in Battle Creek, Michigan.
The sanitarium system
Guests, staff, and buildings
Along with high numbers of patrons, there was a large number of staff at Battle Creek. Kellogg stated that "at the Battle Creek Sanitarium, the number of persons employed is never less than eight hundred, and often rises in the busiest season to more than one thousand". They comprised "physicians, nurses, helpers etc". (There were 30 physicians on staff). The main buildings comprised four large buildings, chief of which was the central structure, "which affords rooming accommodations for about 400 guests...(and)...treatment rooms capable of handling more than 1,000 patients"
The sanitarium became a destination for both prominent and middle-class American citizens. Celebrated American figures who visited the sanitarium (including Mary Todd Lincoln and Sojourner Truth) would influence and encourage enthusiasm for health and wellness among the general population. "Battle Creek Sanitarium was world renowned and became the 'in' place for the rich and famous to seek their lost health, to listen to health lectures and to learn and practice the principles of a healthy lifestyle".
Therapeutic system
At the sanitarium, Kellogg explored various treatments for his patients, including diet reform and frequent enemas. He encouraged a low-fat, low-protein diet with an emphasis on whole grains, fiber-rich foods, and most importantly, nuts. Kellogg also recommended a daily intake of fresh air, exercise, and the importance of hygiene. Many of the theories of John Harvey Kellogg were later published in his book The Road to Wellness. Charles W. Post ("CW") also worked with Dr. John Harvey Kellogg.
Kellogg described the Sanitarium system as "a composite physiologic method comprising hydrotherapy, phototherapy, thermotherapy, electrotherapy, mechanotherapy, dietetics, physical culture, cold-air cure, and health training". To assist with diagnostics and evaluation of therapeutic efficacy, various measures of physiological integrity were utilised to obtain numerous vital coefficients, "especially in relation to the integrity and efficiency of the blood, the heart, the lungs, the liver, the kidneys, stomach, intestines, brain, nerves and muscles".
Hydrotherapy
Hydrotherapy was widely utilized. Two three-story buildings, for men and women respectively, were devoted to hydrotherapy. Each building had a basement, "devoted to rectal and bowel applications and classrooms". Both buildings were connected to the main building and the 'great gymnasium'. Kellogg noted "that hydrotherapy has won a definite and permanent place in modern rational therapeutics can no longer be questioned, and the Battle Creek Sanitarium claims recognition as the pioneer in scientific hydrotherapy" in America. Indeed, while some therapies from the 19th century and early 20th century have fallen by the wayside, or remain controversial, hydrotherapy remains widely used.
Kellogg's use of hydrotherapy was a more sophisticated development of the system that was utilized in the early 19th century by Vincent Priessnitz, which, when introduced to America, was essentially a "cold water cure", although "as a tonic, cold water has no superior". "The crude, but thoroughgoing methods of the original system of Priessnitz, which prospered among the hardy mountaineers of Austrian Silesia, were much too strenuous for more delicately organized and pampered American invalids. This fact, together with the crass empiricism which characterized the use of water in the first half of the last century, when water-cures were for a time almost a fad, brought water into general disrepute as a curative means, and greatly hindered the scientific development of this invaluable agent". The Battle Creek system utilized both hot and cold water, and correlated the use of hydrotherapy with other therapeutic modalities. Among the methods used were douches, sitz baths, cold mitten frictions, salt glows, towel rubs, wet sheet rubs, wet and dry packings, compresses, "full baths of various sorts, including Nauheim baths, electro-hydric baths, shallow and neutral baths". The use of hot and cold applications was to produce "profound reflex effects", including vasodilation and vasoconstriction. These physiological mechanisms now seem fairly well understood, and underpin the contemporary use of hydrotherapy, with the reflex reactions described by some as the 'rebound phenomenon'
Phototherapy, Thermotherapy, and Electrotherapy
This department employed both solar and electric light, with the latter used chiefly during winter. Phototherapy held a prominent place at Battle Creek, where the first electric light bath was constructed. Regarding the application of electricity, Kellogg noted that "electricity is not capable of accomplishing half the marvels that are claimed for it by many enthusiastic electrotherapists". Nevertheless, he considered it valuable when used in conjunction with hydrotherapy, thermotherapy, and other methods.
Physical training
Physical exercise was an important part of the Battle Creek system, facilitating not just the improvement of muscle tone, but also of posture, respiration, and of circulation and the facilitation of anabolic and catabolic functions enabled by circulatory processes. Exercise included such components as postural, calisthetics, gymnastics, swimming, and passive methods such as mechanotherapy, vibrotherapy, mechanical massage.
Open-air and cold-air methods
Exposure to the sun and open air were regarded as fundamentally important for health, including stimulation of the skin. Battle Creek had a large outdoor gymnasium. Again, the use of temperature differentials facilitated by water was a component, with exercise followed by a plunge into a fresh water swimming pool "just cool enough to be refreshing and invigorating". Patients were encouraged to sleep in the open air, and a range of outdoor activities were facilitated, from wood-chopping, to basketball and other games, walking trotting, swimming lessons. Also available were skating, tobogganing, skiing, and other outdoor sports (p. 111). "Thus all the best advantages of the seashore, camping out, 'going fishing', and other forms of recreation are secured, while the patient is protected from excess by the careful guidance of his physician, and has the advantages of medical care, dietetic regulation, etc".
Dietetics
Battle Creek utilised information as known at that time to provide nutritional requirements for health and well-being relative to each person's requirements. Food required careful prescriptive preparation, with care also taken to ensure appetiveness and palatability were recognised. The diet lists included "scores of special dishes and hundreds of special food preparations, each of which has been carefully studied in relation to its nutritive and therapeutic properties", with the diet lists used "by the physicians in arranging the diet prescriptions of individual patients". Also, "all the so-called Sanitarium health foods" were "regularly found on the Sanitarium bill of fare, having been originally devised solely for this use".
Decline of the Battle Creek Sanitarium
After the Wall Street Crash of 1929 few previously well-to-do patients came to the sanitarium. Finances became very difficult for the "San" and the complex was put under receivership in 1933. The sanitarium stayed in business until after the beginning of WWII. The U.S. Army, needing a hospital, paid $2,341,000 and moved in creating Percy Jones Army Hospital. The complex was later converted into a federal center and is currently named the Hart-Dole-Inouye Federal Center.
National Register
The Battle Creek Sanitarium was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976. Only main building, a long six-story building in the Italian Renaissance Revival style, situated parallel to North Washington Avenue, is included in the listing.
Notable patients
- C. W. Post, founder of Post Cereals, which included the coffee substitute Postum
- Richard Halliburton, later one of the most adventurous travellers of his generation
- Warren G. Harding, twenty-ninth President of the United States
- Irving Fisher, celebrity economist and later fellow of J. H. Kellogg's Race Betterment Foundation (eugenics)
- Amelia Earhart, first female aviator to fly across the Atlantic Ocean
- Johnny Weissmuller, actor and athlete famous for his portrayal of Tarzan
- Henry Ford, founder of the Ford Motor Company and inventor of the modern assembly line
- Mary Todd Lincoln, wife of President Abraham Lincoln
- Sojourner Truth, African-American slave in New York State, later escaped, then abolitionist and fighter for women's rights
- James Cash Penney, Founder of J.C. Penney Department Stores
- Madam C. J. Walker, African American entrepreneur and philanthropist at Battle Creek in November 1917
Notes
References
Further reading
- Schwarz, Richard W. John Harvey Kellogg: Pioneering Health Reformer. Hagerstown, MD: Review and Herald, 2006
- Wilson, Brian C. Dr. John Harvey Kellogg and the Religion of Biologic Living. Indianapolis, IN; Indiana University Press, 2014
External links
- Photo Gallery (1000+ images) related to Battle Creek Sanitarium and Dr. John Harvey Kellogg
- The Road to Wellville on IMDb
- Benjamin, Patricia J. (2004). "A Look Back: Mechanical Massage At The Battle Creek Sanitarium" (PDF). Massage Therapy Journal (Fall): 138. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2007-09-29. Retrieved 3 August 2017.Â
- Sunbathing at the Battle Creek Sanitarium, photograph from Our Friend, the Sun: Images of Light Therapeutics from the Osler Library Collection, c. 1901-1944. Digital exhibition by the Osler Library of the History of Medicine, McGill University
