The Man Who Invented Modern Wellness
Some of Kellogg’s Battle Freaks going through their paces.
Courtesy of University of Michigan Bentley Historical Society
America’s health-care system may be suffering all sorts of indignities, but the wellness industry is doing just fine. More than half the adults in the U.S. take a dietary supplement, and about 20,000 spas offer uncounted treatments, from colonics to cupping. Wellness has become a multibillion-dollar antidote to a bruising medical establishment.
Most accounts of the origins of wellness as an idea, a movement, and a marketing effort go back to the 1970s, when Americans took to yoga, meditation, and carob chips. But before Deepak Chopra and Dr. Oz and Goop, there was Dr. John Harvey Kellogg. In 1878 he opened the Battle Creek Sanitarium, the Canyon Ranch of its time, and began promoting his rules for “biologic living,” a near-religion then. He treated executives, celebrities, and presidents at the San, as it was called; his most devoted followers were known as the Battle Freaks. He sold them special foods, unusual treatments, exercise machines, books, and albums. For 60 years, Kellogg—prescient and kooky—was the most famous doctor in America.