As you sit and enjoy your bowl of Rice Krispies this morning, think about how far we have come in this little world of ours.

The story I am about to tell you, is true.

John Harvey was a Seventh-day Adventist.  He gained a whole big bunch of fame while being the chief medical officer of the Battle Creek Sanitarium (in Michigan).   This was mostly back during the late part of the 1800s.    The Sanitarium was run based on the church’s health principles.

This would include such things as following a vegetarian diet, abstinence from alcohol and tobacco, and a regimen of exercise.  Good old John Harvey followed this point of lifestyle…… among other things.

But here is an interesting part of it.  He put a whole lot of weight in this because Johnny was concerned with reducing sexual stimulation.  He  thought that discouraging meat-eating…. and the like …. well……  helped with this.

John Harvey was an especially strong proponent of nuts, which he believed would save mankind in the face of decreasing food supply.  Nuts.

At the Battle Creek Sanitarium, John Harvey made residents take part in breathing exercises and mealtime marches to promote proper digestion of food throughout the day. And sunbaths.

This next part sounds very pleasant… indeed.  He made sure that the bowel of each and every patient was plied with water, from above and below.

His favorite device was an enema machine that could rapidly instill several gallons of water in a series of enemas.  I swear I am not making this up.   Every water enema was followed by a pint of yogurt — half was eaten, the other half was administered by enema.  He thought this created a squeaky-clean intestine.  Not to mention other things.

Oh my oh my…. it KEEPS going.  John really was a  gifted guy.  He was a skilled surgeon who often donated his services to indigent patients at his clinic.  Nice enough yes.

And…. although generally against unnecessary surgery to treat diseases… he DID advocate circumcision, and other mutilation-type surgeries….  allegedly to prevent masturbation.

As an advocate of sexual abstinence, John Harvey devoted large amounts of his work to discouraging sexual activity.  He warned that many types of sexual activity, including many “excesses” that couples could be guilty of within marriage, were against nature, and therefore, extremely unhealthy.

His biggest rule… again…. NO masturbation.   He felt that masturbation destroyed not only physical and mental health, but the moral health of individuals as well. Johnny surmised that this “solitary-vice” caused cancer of the womb, urinary diseases, nocturnal emissions, impotence, epilepsy, insanity, and mental and physical debility… and of course… dimness of vision.  Teenage boys…. beware.   You’ll go blind.

As if that isn’t enough…. he worked on the rehabilitation of those wicked masturbators, often employing extreme measures, even mutilation, on both sexes.

And just when you thought it couldn’t get any whackier….  (no pun intended) John was outspoken on his beliefs on race and segregation.  He founded the Race Betterment Foundation, which became a major center of the new eugenics movement in America. John Harvey was in favor of racial segregation and believed that immigrants and non-whites would damage the gene pool.

He had many notable patients, such as former president William Howard Taft, composer and pianist Percy Grainger, arctic explorers Vilhjalmur Stefansson and Roald Amundsen, world travelers Richard Halliburton and Lowell Thomas, aviator Amelia Earhart, economist Irving Fisher, Nobel prize winning playwright George Bernard Shaw, actor and athlete Johnny Weissmuller, founder of the Ford Motor Company Henry Ford, inventor Thomas Edison, and actress Sarah Bernhardt.  I kid you freaking NOT!  I don’t know what they saw him for…. but they were all patients.

Done with the Rice Krispies yet?  Well this guy… was John Harvey….. Kellogg.   And….. today is his birthday.  2/26/1852 – 12/14/1943.    Yep.  The Founder of Kellogg’s Cereal… and inventor of the Corn Flake.  Slayer of the Masturbator.

Snap.  Crackle. Pop.

“Illusion is the first of all pleasures.” – Oscar Wilde