John Harvey Kellogg
(The following text is an excerpt from the English Wikipedia:)
John Harvey Kellogg, M.D.[a 1], (26 February 1852 in Tyrone Township, MI – 14 December 1943 in Battle Creek, MI) was an American medical doctor in Battle Creek, Michigan, who ran a sanitarium using holistic methods, with a particular focus on nutrition, enemas and exercise. Kellogg was an advocate of vegetarianism and is best known for the invention of the breakfast cereal known as corn flakes with his brother, Will Keith Kellogg.
Contents
Kellogg's views on sexuality
As an advocate of sexual abstinence, Kellogg devoted large amounts of his educational and medical work to discouraging sexual activity on the basis of dangers both scientifically understood at the time—as in sexually transmissible diseases—and those taught by the Seventh-day Adventist Church. [...]
Kellogg worked on the rehabilitation of masturbators, often employing extreme measures, even mutilation, on both sexes. He was an advocate of circumcising young boys to curb masturbation and applying phenol to a young woman's clitoris. His views seem to have been close to those of Athol A. W. Johnson. In his "Plain Facts for Old and Young"[1], he wrote:
| “ | A remedy which is almost always successful in small boys is circumcision, especially when there is any degree of phimosis. The operation should be performed by a surgeon without administering an anesthetic, as the brief pain attending the operation will have a salutary effect upon the mind, especially if it be connected with the idea of punishment, as it may well be in some cases. The soreness which continues for several weeks interrupts the practice, and if it had not previously become too firmly fixed, it may be forgotten and not resumed. – John Harvey Kellogg, M.D.[a 1][1] |
He was an especially zealous campaigner against masturbation; this was an orthodox view during his lifetime, especially the earlier part.[2] Kellogg was able to draw upon many medical sources' claims such as "neither the plague, nor war, nor small-pox, nor similar diseases, have produced results so disastrous to humanity as the pernicious habit of onanism," credited to one Dr. Adam Clarke. Kellogg strongly warned against the habit in his own words, claiming of masturbation-related deaths "such a victim literally dies by his own hand," among other condemnations. He felt that masturbation destroyed not only physical and mental health, but the moral health of individuals as well. Kellogg also believed the practice of this "solitary-vice" caused cancer of the womb, urinary diseases, nocturnal emissions, impotence, epilepsy, insanity, and mental and physical debility; "dimness of vision" was only briefly mentioned.
See also
External links
Abbreviations
- ↑ a b
Doctor of Medicine
, Wikipedia. Retrieved 14 June 2021. In the United Kingdom, Ireland and some Commonwealth countries, the abbreviation MD is common.
References
- ↑ a b
Kellogg JH (1888): Treatment for Self-Abuse and Its Effects
, in: Plain Facts for Old and Young (archive URL). Project Gutenberg (ed.). Burlington, Iowa: F. Segner & Co. Retrieved 31 October 2021. - ↑
Self, Eleanor. The Rise of Circumcision in Victorian America 
. The Alexandrian. 2016; 5(1) Retrieved 23 December 2022.
