Dr John Kellogg invented cornflakes because he believed eating bland food would curb people’s urge to indulge in that most dangerous of pastimes, masturbation.
Battle Creek Sanitarium, America’s most popular medical spa of the early 20th century, may be best known as the birthplace of the corn flake. But some might say that the biggest flake to come out of Battle Creek was the man in charge: John Harvey Kellogg, the dapper doctor who typically dressed in a white suit and white shoes, often with a white cockatoo perched on his shoulder.
7. Masturbation cures
A zealous lifelong foe of what he called “the solitary vice” and the “vile practice,” Kellogg wrote that masturbation led to poor digestion, memory loss, impaired vision, heart disease, epilepsy and insanity—to name just a few insidious side effects.
To break young boys of the habit, Kellogg suggested procedures that ranged from ridiculous to barbaric, including tying their hands, bandaging the offending organ or putting a cage over it.
If that didn’t work, he recommended circumcision without anesthetic—"as the brief pain attending the operation will have a salutary effect upon the mind,” he wrote in his book, Plain Facts for Old and Young. Kellogg had an even more gruesome set of treatments for girls, including the application of pure carbolic acid to the clitoris or, in more extreme cases, surgical removal.
