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April 8, 2021 81 mins

Robert is joined again by Miles Gray to continue to discuss John Harvey Kellogg.

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Episode Transcript

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Speaker 1 (00:00):
M hm, that's that is we're starting the episode. Miles
is coughing up the marijuana he just smoked. Look life, stuff, man,

(00:20):
it's fucking rough. We're recording this on a Monday, which
we never do. Um, this is why this opening is
why we don't record on Monday's. Sorry, I woke up
at one, get out of bed at two, and then
ran in my armor for an hour to wake my
body up, and have done nothing productive except wonderful open

(00:42):
up podcast. Thank you. I feel great since I got
to run. But yeah, you have like a exerciser's glow.
M Yeah, I don't know if that's that's that's exactly
what you're supposed to say. You have a colonizer's glow
about you. Oh, thank I could go for some colonizing Miles.
Just like, I'm just gonna throw some names out there.

(01:05):
El Salvador, that seems like a place that hasn't been colonized. Well, yeah,
spoil it. Well never mind, I'm like, I don't want
to look it up and find out how we've talked
about El Salvador in our in Our School of the
America's episode All the Death Squads, We're back there. Yeah,
And then we're confused about MS thirteen. Huh, which started

(01:27):
in the United States. It's all good. It's like, huh,
it's so good ship. You know what else is good ship?
Miles James Harvey, John Harvey Kellogg, which one was he? James,
Jesus's James And they would say John Harvey Kitel. Yeah,
I didn't know where you were going there. To be honest,

(01:47):
I wrote, I wrote a Harvey Kitel episode. But so
he said, three hundred and thirty six pages was too
long for a podcast script. Oh my god. So well, um,
it was almost as long as the Will Wheat the script.
She wonte won't let me read. That's not accurate. You
can read that. I ever told you you can't. Sorry,

(02:09):
legal told us I can't do the Will Wheaton script
because there's no evidence that he was the son of
Sam Killer, the internet's most very rich child. Uh, speaking
of children, you know who was terrible with children? M
John Harvey Killock. That America's great come doctor. So if

(02:32):
you can we have the title of these episodes be
America's Great Come Doctor. I mean, if it's what your
heart desire, I've never stopped you. Magna come doctor, Magna doctor.
Magna come loud though, No, Okay, so let's let's let's
I actually scripted the start of this being let's start

(02:53):
this episode by talking a whole lot about masturbation, and
I guess we got an early start on that. Yeah,
we're depraved, We're depraved. I didn't. Most people would agree
that masturbating is among with some exceptions, is among the
least problematic things that you can do as long as
you're private about it. It's low carbon, it's available to
people regardless of their income level, and it brings with

(03:13):
it a whole bunch of health benefits. You know, people
with penises who masturbate regularly have lower risks of variety
of cancers. People with vaginas who masturbate regularly often find
climaxing makes sex easier. Everyone who masturbates can benefit from
pain relief, better sleep, lower levels of cortisol. It's pretty
much a win win, is what I'm saying. I'm really
glad you said privately because Louis c K J Yes,

(03:34):
I was. I was thinking about Louis c. K when
I wrote that paragraph and made certain to insert privately
mm hmmm mmmm into a plant, into an innocent plant
in front of innocent people. I'm gonna go ahead and say,
if you're private about it, it's fine to come in plants. Yeah,
it's fine their plants. They don't know what's going on.

(03:55):
They don't know what you're doing to them. It's like
having sex when a cat's in the room. The cat
doesn't understand, and if your worried scoop it out after
that seems worse for some reason, do you really care?
You care that much? It's like you're gonna bust on
the soil. But then you're like, well, I don't want
to fully. I think coming on a plant, it's like
it's like having sex in front of a cat or

(04:16):
a dog when they're in the room, and it's like, yeah,
they don't know what's going on. It's not like sucking
in front of a monkey. If you've ever sucked in
front of a monkey, the monkeys know what's happening. I
don't think you're right about that one. I think I'm
right about that. I don't like eyes on me, even
animal or otherwise. Well, my old roommates dog used to
hump along on the side. Oh yeah, I mean, but

(04:38):
that that doesn't mean he knows what's happening. That just
means he knows the motion, but just at a young
age or shout out, shout out to the young legend rocks.
He that's the dog's name. Wow. I once fucked in
front of a couple of hundred monkeys and it was
very clear that they were all well aware of what
was happening. Seven. Yeah it was he Robert is now

(05:09):
the all like Takata, like most interesting man in the
world guy, rather as just yeah, it's you just like
hitting a forty in an alleyway, like the same setup,
and he's like in front of three monkeys. Have you
ever even fucked? It might have been a few dozen,

(05:30):
It's hard to tell. In the it was a lot
of when he did that bit, just give a nice
cheers and a cocktie brow. You know. It's just if
there's an energy to it. I feel like if Steel
Reserve wanted to advertise with me, I could sell a
lot of Steel Reserve. That is yah extra gravity to eleven, Baby,
where's the two eleven crew at Steel Reserve? When was

(05:51):
the last time you vomited on another person? Steel Reserve
to eleven? Also armed robbery? Who knows whatever? Still Reserve
the perfect size for holding a six shooter in your
other hands. The California penal code. Yea. Yeah, so this

(06:14):
was longer than I intended the introduction to be. But
the point of it is that you have to work
pretty hard to make masturbation be unhealthy. Um and this
is how people, I think in general feel now because
of overwhelming, rigorous scientific data showing that it's pretty good
for you. But in John Harvey Kellogg's day, scientific consensus
was less about what the hard data said and more

(06:36):
about whatever a bunch of weird white dudes with sexual
hang ups figured was right. Kellogg was the latest and
one of the biggest links in a chain that stretched
back generations. Sylvester Graham and many of the other scientists
of his day believe masturbation would lead inevitably to insanity
if it continued long enough. Kellogg agreed and extended the
dangers of coming further to a breathtaking list of maladies.

(06:57):
Here's how scholar Verne Bullog captured the different ailments Dr
Kelov Kellogg blamed on masturbation. Quote general disability, consumption like symptoms,
premature and defective development, sudden changes in disposition, lassitude, sleeplessness,
failure of mental capacity, fickleness, untrustworthiness, love of solitude, bashfulness,

(07:18):
a natural boldness, mock piety, being easily frightened, confusion of ideas,
aversion to girls and boys, but a decided liking of
boys and girls. So I guess you like you like
tom boys too much? If you masturbate, round shoulders, a
week back and stiffness of joints, paralysis of the lower extremities,

(07:39):
a natural gait, bad posture in bed, lack of breast development,
and females capricious appetite, fondness for a natural or hurtful
or irritation articles such as salt, pepper, spices, vinegar, mustard, clay, slate, pencils, plaster,
and shot. You might like spices and chock if you
come too much? Oh what is this list? How convenient?

(08:06):
Disgusted it? Simple food, use of tobacco, unnatural paleness, acne
or pimples, biting of fingernails, shifty eyes, moist cold hands,
palpitation of the heart, hysteria and females clorosis or green sickness, anemia,
epileptic fits, bedwedding, and use of obscene words and phrases.

(08:26):
I will say that last one is accurate. People do
do do cuss a lot when when masturbating. I mean,
who knows who have thought a teenage with pimples might
also be masturbating? Yeah, there's a real correlation. It's not there.
And actually, Myles, you've keyed in on how all of
this nonsense really got going in the first place. Because

(08:47):
scientists of the day I didn't want to think that
they weren't empiric, basing their conclusions on like empiric reality
even though they weren't, and they found ways to convince
themselves that observation backed up their fears about masturbation. Here's
how it worked. Nineteenth century physicians would observe patients and
mental institutions and make a note of what behaviors they

(09:08):
engaged in. The idea was that whatever behavior unhealthy people
engaged in must somehow cause that unhealthiness. And since the
number one thing inmates and asylums did was masturbate, doctors
conclusion that masturbation caused insanity. What the fun I mean,
it's not funny, because no, it's century. Asylums were just

(09:33):
unbelievable crimes against humanity. But God, good Lord, how simple,
and we were calling these people fucking experts. These people
we lock up in a room and never let out
our masturbating. That must be why we locked them up,
damn it. Huh. And then what have you that people
that are always looking at them masturbating. Yeah, I don't

(09:53):
think any of them ever analyzed themselves a little there,
like apply that same logic path to anything else except
for this one thing, like they did, but like they
did with like kids have pimples and kids masturbate, it
must be a cause, you know, but everything well then also,
let's see this kid's also he walks funny, all right's

(10:13):
a weird gate and his posture is bad because he's
a teen who's like awkward in their own body or
their awkward in their own body. And you know, it's
just but I love late the lazy science of this time.
It's amazing, just like it's so fucking ridiculous and unchallenged
it is. And based on this unbelievably shoddy data, like

(10:35):
huge chunks of the scientific community conclude that masturbation is
not just bad for you, but a public health menace.
And as a result, and since it was like a menace,
doctors developed a variety of ways to treat it, because
obviously this is a life threatening problem, so almost anything
is justified. Ap Ointments were applied to the hands or
genitals of the masturbating youth to make touching their genitals painful. Uh,

(10:58):
stuff like icy hot. Basically do they put like at
on people's genitals to make it hurt to touch. Some
surgeons would actually put holes in a person's foreskin and
insert a ring into it, not unlike a Prince Albert,
but in such a way that if you were to
if you were to get erect, it would stretch the
foreskin painfully. Yeah, these are torture devices, like the club

(11:19):
for you. Yeah, like the club for your foreskin. That
is so fucked up and violent, it's horrible. What's the horrible? What?
And did they have any like success stories that the
success story, this one knocked off the masturbating and now
they're completely Uh, they're they're they're they're much better now

(11:40):
we've seen market improvement. I would imagine the way a
lot of the success stories work is that, Right, You've
got this kid who is has some sort of behavioral problem. Right,
he's not paying attention in school, He's he's lashing out
or something. He's doing something and you're blaming it on
the masturbation. So you put a torture ring in his
dick and he stops doing the thing that got him
punished because you're torturing him, right, and he doesn't want

(12:02):
to be tortured. It's not because he stopped masturbating, because
masturbation wasn't causing the behavior, although he probably doesn't masturbate
as much because you put a torturing in his dick.
But through the same kind of logic they were using
earlier in the mental hospitals, people conclude this helps. Wow,
it's great closed loop. Um Castration was ordered in the

(12:24):
most severe cases, but circumcision was much more common, and
in fact, in the United States, circumcision first gained purchase
among gentiles because it was believed, I mean accurately, that
it would deadened sensation and thus reduce masturbation. So circumcision
first became popular among like non Jewish people in the
United States because it was like an anti masturbation treatment.

(12:46):
How did that go? Nobody's ever come, myles. I don't
know if you're aware of this, but it doesn't happen anymore.
It's like I'm gonna get some more of that beef
fat from earlier. Be right back, are you guys rendering
that lard? So today? Uh, you know, as with today,

(13:06):
like for every popular kind of health ailment boogeyman, even
like COVID nineteen. You know, there's the stuff the doctors
actually prescribed for it, and then there's a whole bunch
of like mom cures. You know what I'm talking about
when I say mom cures, Yeah, homespun remedies cooked up
by parents. This is the case today with every kind
of public health problem, and it was the case in
the nineteen hundreds with masturbation, as this section from a

(13:27):
study in the Journal of Technology and Culture lays out quote.
Some parents, however, preferred to develop methods of their own,
many of which were patented. American inventive genius quickly asserted
itself through the development of a wide variety of gloves, guards,
and other devices designed to make it more difficult for
a child to masturbate. Gloves, for example, we're tied on
child children's hands when as they went to bed, and

(13:49):
parents were instructed to have their child sleep with the
gloves on top of the blanket to make certain that
there was not even gloved contact with the genital area.
Gloves were also advised for mental patients and were widely
used in mental institutions. Especially designed bed cradles were manufactured
in order to lift the bedclothes from the genital area
so that the child would not rub against the blankets.
Girls were discouraged from spreading their legs, and special hobbles

(14:11):
were designed to prevent them from doing so. They hobbled
young girls legs to stop them from spreading them because
it was thought that that would cause masturbation. Oh most ubiquitous, however,
were the various harnesses designed to protect the genital area,
usually patented under the to the term surgical devices. The

(14:31):
female harnesses usually had perforated wire type meshing so that
the girls could urinate through them and never touched themselves.
All of these devices were fastened in the back, many
with locks for which only the parents had the key.
For males, there were similar devices, but most popular were
sheaths with metal teeth that fitted over the penis. If
the penis became erect, the teeth pierced the flesh and
made any erection painful. Each new breakthrough in technology seemed

(14:54):
to lead to a new kind of device. Appliances that
gave electric shocks, for example, came on the market after
the elopment of batteries. From patent office records, I have
been able to identify some twenty devices intended to prevent masturbation.
Twenty devices. Yeah, that's just the ones that got patented.
How common would you say this was as a percentage?

(15:16):
I have no idea it was. It was obviously this
was a thing that wealthier parents did to wealthier kids
more often than it was for the poor. Because it
costs money to get these kind of medical treatments, that
costs money to buy these kinds of devices. Um, but
it was not uncommon, right, I think is clear it was.
And and the idea that even if these devices weren't,

(15:36):
the most method of treating with it, punishing some sort
of punishment, often involving physical pain for masturbation, I would say,
was the norm like when it was caught, because there
was a very widespread idea that it was harmful. Right,
So that's that makes so much sense I think in
really trying to look at sort of the practical experience
of how puritanical American society is and the averse to

(16:00):
sexuality is you have it. You have generations of people
who are you know, receiving punitive treatment, you know, punishment, uh,
physical punishment for exploring their sexuality. And how that just
sort of keeps manifesting and iterating. Yeah, it's pretty great, Um,

(16:23):
pretty great. I mean it's wild because some of the
devices described you can now still find on sale, but
for a very different purpose. Um. But I suspect that
probably has something to do with that. A lot of
weird kinks are born during this period because of the
medical genital torture industry. It's good stuff, Miles, it's good stuff.

(16:43):
So thanks for having thanks for being on here. It's
gonna get a lot worse. As a heads up, yeah,
this is the best it's going to be. So just
saying just savor, savor the moment where we're just talking
about a torture cage for a penis. Um. So John
Harvey Outlogue. The reason I go through all this is
to point out that he was not the origin point
for the war on masturbation, nor was he the only

(17:05):
prominent voice urging abuse of treatments to discourage perfectly natural
self pleasuring. He was, however, the most prominent physician in
the country. By the early nineteen hundreds, the sanitarium was
one of the most advanced and respected medical facilities in
the nation, and since Dr Kellogg was an experiment er,
he experimented with new treatments from masturbation as well. One
of these treatments involved what he called skillful catheterization, using

(17:29):
his considerable surgical abilities to insert a catheter up the
aurethra of the offending masturbator. Next, he would electrocute the
catheter going up into their aurethra, often while shooting water
up into the urethra at the same time to make
it more conductive. Yeah, I guess, or just because he
fixed shooting water into every hole is the solution to problems.

(17:51):
It might not have been a tort it that might
just have been because like, well, if we add water,
it will make it better, because water is the medicine
that I prefer. Water and electricity the great these electrifying baths.
So it's not a huge jump for the man Jesus.
But yeah, shoves a catheter up there urethro and then
shoots water and electricity up it again. It sounds like

(18:11):
something the CIA would do, right, Like that's some Guantanamo shit.
Is there any evidence, like we're the writings on the success,
you know, because I'm sure they probably had to manufacture
stories to make it. Like how could you just like okay, yeah,
because okay, because I'm just like, you know, this is
just so fuck up. A big part of this is

(18:33):
it is not quite universally accepted that that this is
bad health wise, and it was, but it was nearly
universally accepted that it was morally wrong. So it wasn't
just does it work? It was this needs to be punished, right,
so this is what you do. It's just like parents
beating their kids for thousands of years, nobody like there.
You could find a lot of different people writing about
how healthy it is to hit your kid. Nobody was

(18:56):
doing studies on it. There wasn't empirical evidence about the
value of slapping your get around, but they did it
and they were certain that it helped. So I don't know, Yes,
so this is just the are just sickest urges in this,
you know, morally quote unquote justifiable? Way absolutely? Um so
yeah that that was one of Kellogg's experimental therapies, and

(19:18):
he would he wouldn't when he would have people brought
into his facility for chronic masturbation. They would often be
interned at the sanitarium for long periods of time, where
a variety of therapies would be tried on them. We
talked last episode about his specific painfully uncomfortable betting requirements
to avoid stimulation. This was in part because Dr Kellogg
viewed comfortable, healthy sleep, the kind where you you know,

(19:39):
enter a rim cycle and dream as inherently dangerous. He
declared in writing, in perfectly natural sleep, there are no dreams.
Consciousness is entirely suspended, and for some reason, that is
one of the most frightening things I've ever read. Just like,
if you're dreaming, you're unhealthy. Someone's dreaming, someone's having weird dreams,
aren't they. Dr John Kellogg is having some dreams that

(20:03):
he does not like. Hey, if you're having dreams too,
then you're just as Based on this logic, yeah, that's
why you want to make sure they're sleeping. Arrangements are
as uncomfortable as possible, so that nobody ever gets a
good night's sleep. And did he practice what he preached?
He did. He did practice what he to to the
extent that we can verify as far as we know,
he practiced what he preached. Interesting, John Harvey didn't just

(20:25):
think dreams were unhealthy. He thought they were immoral. If
a child or a woman with a masturbating problem claimed
to be unable to control their dreams, he would call
them a liar. Erotic dreams, in Kellogg's understanding, were choices
acts of deliberate defiance against morality and against the medical establishment.
Dr Kellogg also urged his patients to avoid consumption of

(20:46):
quote sexually aggressive food. And here's a quote from Kellogg.
Tea and coffee have led thousands to perdition in this way, candy, spices, cinnamon, clothes, peppermints,
and all strong essences powerfully excite the genital organ and
lead to the same result. You know how when you're
drinking coffee and you just can't stop yourself, just just

(21:06):
just pounding it like a beach at oh Maha before
the ground assaulting did cinnamon might as well call it?
Oh no, No, they didn't have spices in his day.
Remember he broke up with his brother because his brother
puts sugar in the corners. It was part of part
of why they didn't get along. Yeah, I really appreciate

(21:31):
that D day visual to thank you. Yes, it's a
someone furiously masturbating, like on a hedgehog on the beach.
Uh So, all right, here's the ads. We're back, we're back,

(21:54):
and we're all having a good appropriate work day. Um,
let's get back to talking about how this old man
punished people for masturbating. So it will probably not surprise
you to hear that. John Harvey Kellogg also forbade his
patients from reading romantic literature, which in his mind, was
as deadly as any hard drug. Quote. Storybooks, romances, love tales,

(22:15):
and religious novels constitute the chief part of the reading
matter which American young ladies greedily devour. We have known
young ladies still in their teens who had read whole
libraries of the most exciting novels. The taste for novel
reading is like that for liquor or opium. Wait the whole.

(22:35):
Guys like Kellogg, he wants a world where nobody eats spices,
everything is planned, nobody sleeps a full night's sleep, and
people are tortured for masturbating. And if a girl reads
a romance novel, she might become aware of the fact
that it's possible to enjoy life and that would be
devastating to John Harvey Kellogg's worldview. What a fucking he

(22:56):
is Just it's just so ridiculous when that earlier quote,
when he's said it would be like an act of
you know, you know, transgression against medical establishment, and he
coupled that with morality, you know, just sort of this
you know, Oh, they've been ordained from fucking by God
to be the enforcers of his law. However they see

(23:17):
it through their fucked up lens. He believes that struggle,
you know, he gets into medicine through the Seventh day
Adventist Church to him dedicating him to God. And now
like it's just like, what a fucking that? Just what
shows you though too, Like I'm sure you know how
again that's something else that reverberates in medicine culturally. If

(23:39):
this is if this is part of you know, like
I'm I'm guessing this was the medical establishment. Like quite
this is not universal. There are, as we talked about later,
there's doctors a lot, there's medical like a not insignificant
amount of medical professionals. And in this period, even who
disagree with these conclusions but this is a fairly mainstream attitude. Yes, um,

(24:00):
you know, John Harvey Kellogg is kind of like a
Doctor Oz figure, but he is much more respected among
mainstream doctors than Dr Oz was imparted because he is
actually an excellent surgeon, right like he isn't. Yeah? Um,
So I found a lot of the quotes that I've
read so far, and a wonderful why write up by
Jezebel It will be on the show. Notes that I
really recommend reading. Um. That article summarizes Dr Kellogg's arguments

(24:22):
against romance literature. Thus Lee. The problem with this sort
of reading, explained to Kellogg, is that it takes a
girl beyond the wholesome dreadfulness of her reality and transports
her to a place that triggers passion. Passion so great
that some girls quote discovered the fatal secret themselves. And
the fatal secret is, of course, that it's it's possible
for women to orgasm. Oh my god, you don't. You

(24:45):
don't want to learning that? And this here that I
should note that John Harvey Kellogg bragged his entire life
about never consummating his marriage. He was married for like
forty something years and would grag his entire life, that
he and his wife never fucked. I'm so sorry to her,
but I have a feeling he was probably bad at sex.
I think she might have dodged a bullet there. Yeah, yeah,

(25:09):
I think so. She's like, yeah, what is how do
you like? You're like, oh, you know, I'm not fine
dry for fucking ages, man, baby, it's just oh my god,
kidney stones. I don't even get my dick wet when
I take a bath. A special copper submersible diving bell

(25:35):
for my genitals, Oh god what ah? No, definitely not
a genital diving bell. Yeah, a genital that's very fun.
I mean, I don't know what do you even say

(25:56):
to that this is this is this is like like
the fact that you would brag about being married for
forty something years and never once fucking is give some
And the fact that he's a man who thought that
dreaming was unhealthy. Like both of those facts together like, oh,
you were profoundly damaged, just an incredibly unhealthy person. Yeah,

(26:17):
it's unbelievable. And then really amazing this like his place
in our culture and being so like just unwitting about
the entire history about him. Aside from just vaguely being
like, like like I said in the beginning of like, yeah, dude,
I know he was like about masturbation. Yeah, no, no,

(26:38):
it's it's real bad. It's about to get real worse.
So John Harvey Kellogg, if questioned on any of the
things that I've read, any of his like statements that
I've read earlier, if questioned about any of this, would
have defended himself by pointing out studies like the research
into masturbating mental patients. He would have claimed accurately that
the dangers of masturbation were widely agreed upon by experts

(26:58):
of his day. But most of his specific claims about
how children were impacted by what he called the secret
vice were not tied to any specific research. He was convinced,
for moral reasons that masturbation was a danger, eclipsing almost
anything else. There was no research to show that electrocution,
uncomfortable beds, and mental abuse actually stopped masturbation, but they
punished the crime of self abuse, and John Harvey looked

(27:21):
no further than that in justifying his treatments. And again
you have to remember that this guy is like the
pop doctor of his day. Parents listened to him. Here
is a checklist he published of different behaviors that, in
his mind, were signs that a parent's child was secretly
engaged in deadly masturbation. Bed wedding quote. Masturbation causes the
entire genital area to become lax and undisciplined changes in behavior.

(27:45):
When a girl naturally joyous, happy, confiding, and amiable becomes
an unaccountably gloomy, sad, fretful to satisfied and unconfiding. Be
certain that masturbation is the cause for it will rarely
be found to be anything other than solitary and indulgence.
He listed insomnia as a justification for a suspicion of
evil habits. Trouble in school might also indicate masturbation, as

(28:07):
doctor as Dr Kellogg claimed, it damage children's memories and
their ability to focus. Masturbation caused lying, bashfulness and an
unwillingness to meet the eyes of adults. The eye is
a wonderful tell tale of the secrets of the mind,
he warned parents. Boldness a child acting out, in other words,
was another sign of secret masturbation, as was fearfulness quote.

(28:29):
Easily frightened children are abundant among young masturbaters. The victim's
mind is constantly filled with vague forebodings of evil. He
often looks behind him, looks into all the closets, peeps
under the bed, and is constantly expressing fears of impending evil.
Such movements are the result of a diseased imagination, and
they may give right justly give rise to suspicion. Another sign,
z Miles, it's like he's just listing everything a kid

(28:55):
would possibly do. It's so fucked up and unfair. It
gets worse. Another side was unusual vaginal discharge or a
stretched vaginal cavity in little girls. Most worrisome, Kellogg wrote,
was seductive behavior from young female children. A forward or
loose manner and company with little boys is suspicious conduct,
especially in one who has previously shown no disposition of

(29:17):
this short sort. Girls addicted to this habit usually show
an unnatural fondness for the society of little boys, and
not infrequently are guilty of the most wanton conduct. Now
you already noted, Miles, that a number of these symptoms
of secret masturbation or just things kids do. But it
gets worse than that, because, as that Jezebel write up notes,
a lot of the things that Dr Kellog laid out

(29:38):
as signs of masturbation are also today commonly recognized signs
that a child may be sexually abused. Oh my God, yeah, buddy, yeah, Jesus,
here's Jezebel quote the Delaware Department of Services for Children,
Youth and their Families. Because it gives a very succinct
list of similar behaviors, which also include changes and behavior

(30:00):
inappropriate sexual behaviors, changes in school performance, and vaginal discharge.
Modern medicine and psychology identifies these conditions as potential signs
of a child being sexually abused. The two lists match
almost word for word. Now, the thought that countless sex
abuse victims were brought to Dr Kellogg. Child sex abuse
victims were brought to Dr Kellogg and punished for masturbation

(30:22):
is horrible enough, but it actually gets a lot worse
than that. A particularly dire case study would be one
that Kellogg himself wrote out in his nineteen o two
edition of Ladies Guide to Health and Disease, a book
he absolutely should not have written. He writes that a
mother brought in her ten year old daughter to him
for treatment. The young girl was a rape victim. Dr
Kellogg identifies her as such. He knew that she was

(30:45):
a victim of sexual abuse, and he wrote quote her
first instruction, and by instruction he means her first Like
she first learned about sex by this guy who abused her.
Was received from a hoary headed fiend in human shape
who had enticed her to a secluded place, and they're
introduced her to all the nastiness which is depraved and
sensual nature could devise. Now, so far, that's not horrible.

(31:07):
He's putting the blame on the abuser, which is good.
But the problem is that Kellogg didn't see this little
girl's chief problem as the fact that she'd been abused
and assaulted and robbed of agency over her own body.
In his eyes, the problem was that she had been
introduced to sexual sin and that was going to make
her masturbate. Oh my god. So again he gets brought

(31:31):
a ten year old sex abuse victim and his first
concern is she might start masturbating. Yeah, yeah, and like
this just horrible feedback loop. That's impossible, Like all roads
just lead to this no matter what, and there's no
empathy or anything. And it's the thing where even if
this person is a victim in being a victim leads

(31:53):
them to this what he believes as an evil behavior.
The solution is always some form of abuse to stop
the masturbation. He wrote, quote, a little girl, naturally bright,
an unusually attractive and intelligent, had become the victim of
this soul and body destroying habit, which had brought on
a serious nervous disease and threatened to destroy both body
and mind before she had reached the age of ten years.

(32:15):
So you see what he's doing here. He's identifying that
she's traumatized, but he's blaming it not on the assault,
but on the fact that she's masturbating. That he assumes
she's masturbating as a result of the assault. As a physician,
Dr Kellogg saw his job as not helping this girl
with the trauma from her assault, or even treating the

(32:35):
physical symptoms of her rape. His job was to stop
her from masturbating. In cases like these, he had a
standard procedure. Step one was that the parents needed to
catch their child in the act. The best way to
do that, he believed, was to wait until a few
minutes after the child had gone to bed and sneak
up on them, throw off their blankets and quote under

(32:57):
some pretense forcibly examined the child's in to tal you
for evidence of sexual excitement. So again he's brought in
a rape victim and he tells your parents, what you
need to do is assaulter in the night of the night. Yeah. Yeah,
hard to define a worse thing to do in that situation. Yeah,

(33:18):
and again no matter, Oh, it's presumed masturbating is the
reason that they have are displaying trauma on top of
or displaying their signs of their trauma on top of
acknowledging but not understand. It's just so vile. Yeah, it's
it's really bad. And like to know that again whatever

(33:39):
if this is the majority or whatever, that it's mainstream
enough that there are generations of parents that ingested this,
Like how like what the reverberations of that are and
like down like in our culture and where like where
we're at, like this is, yeah, this is thee of
the seeds of that. Yeah, you you think about just

(34:00):
how fucked up things, how how clearly fucked up both
not just like the things revealed by me too, but
sort of the the reaction to it and the lashing
back against it, all of that um, this is a
part of that, right, because a lot of the generations
that created what are today is sort of like the

(34:20):
conservative moral code, were raised in this stuff. Their grandparents
were raised in this stuff, right, and they passed some
of that down like this is a piece of that
horrible puzzle. It's pretty bad. So back on this subject
of inspecting kids to make sure they're not masturbating. For
children with penises, this was as easy as looking for
an erection. For children with vagina's, Kellogg wrote, quote, if

(34:43):
the same course is pursued with girls under the same circumstances,
the clearest will be found congested with the other genital organs,
which will also be moist from increased secretion. So let's recap.
His advice to the appearance of a teen year old
rape victim was to throw off her covers by surprise
and the dead of night and forcefully inspect her vagiant.
His prescription for the each parents of sex abuse victims

(35:03):
was to abuse their children. Further. It's yeah, like what again,
what's the that? What are you saying at that? But
again it's like they don't get care about evidence, because
this really isn't about no improving their lives. The The
real threat is it's telling that like he's obviously disgusted

(35:27):
at the rapist, but his real horror is that the
the young girl might take some sort of agency over
her body. That's the actual thing that he's he's frightened
of um or boys. He was he didn't like boys
taking age. He didn't be believe people had He believed
like I think it was more like like your body
belongs to God, right, it's the seventh Day. I mean,

(35:48):
it's not just the seven day eventus that believe this,
But that's where he gets it. It's this idea that
your body is not your own and it is my
job as a physician to stop you from abusing it.
It's pretty bad and what a morbid responsibility to think, Yes, yeah, um,
pretty dark. Uh. And I should say that everything we've
just outlined was the least invasive deterrent that John Harvey

(36:11):
Kellogg suggested for the cases of masturbation. The goal here
was to shame these kids by embarrassing them. They didn't
like that was that was the actual goal, was that, like,
if your parents catch you in the night, you will
be ashamed and you won't do it anymore. He believed
that what he one instance of what he called morally
justified violation would deter most children, for those who soldiered

(36:32):
on his prescription grew more severe. Quote. Bandaging the parts
has been practiced with success. Tying the hands is also
successful in some cases, but this will not always succeed,
for they will often contrive to continue the habit in
other ways, as by working the limbs or lying upon
the abdomen. Covering the organs with the cage has been
practiced with entire success. Like many doctors of his era,

(36:53):
Kellogg prescribed circumcision to his most severe patients. He was
adamant that in these cases painkillers should not be prescribed. Quote.
The operations should be performed by a surgeon with without
administering an anesthetic. Is the brief pain attending the the
operation will have a salutary effect upon the mind, especially
if it be connected with the idea of punishment, as

(37:14):
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. Jesus So surgery with yeah genital
surgery without uh, anesthesia is your punishment for masturbating? I don't.

(37:36):
We are now in the territory of like I think
some CIA guys would be like, whoa hold on someone,
get the Geneva Convention really quick. We've never read it,
but I'm pretty sure this isn't. This definitely is over
the line. Huh yeah, damn yeah so And I'm just
thinking again that will accepted that kind of treat it is,

(38:01):
and like how the pattern of inflict as much pain
as possible to solve the problem yep, still exists to
this day. It shure does, mich you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah,
it sure does. Surgery was also prescribed for little girls. Um,
and I'm not going to prevaricate here. The surgical option

(38:22):
was what we now call female genital mutilation. Um. They
did not call it that then. They called it the
severing of the clitterests and the labia minora. Kellogg himself
wrote in one of his case studies, quote, a little
girl about ten years of age was brought to us
by her father, who came with his daughter with his
daughter to have her broken of the vile habit of
self abuse into which she had fallen. Having read an

(38:43):
early copy of this work, the father had speedily detected
the habit and had adopted every measure which he could
devise to break his child of the destructive vice which
she had acquired. But in vain, it finally became necessary
to resort to a surgical operation, by which it is
hoped that she was permanently cured, as we have heard
nothing to the contrary since and since, and as the
remedy seemed to be effectual. So that is a father

(39:06):
who is a fan of Kelly Kellogg's books, reads them
and becomes obsessed with the idea that his daughter might
be masturbating, become convinced that he's master, that she is masturbating,
that he can't stop her um and after repeatedly assaulting
her in the night, takes her to Dr Kellogg to
have her genitals mutilated. That that's what happened in that
case study, and that's a success. That is a success.

(39:29):
And one of the good things that Jezebel article notes
is that, as you can tell from that like in
that right up, Dr Kellogg doesn't check in on the child.
He says it is it is hoped she was permanently
accured because we haven't heard anything to the contrary, since
he doesn't Yeah, he doesn't check it in. He doesn't
be like, yeah, look, look back in after four or

(39:51):
five weeks after this surgery to see if it did anything. Like,
he doesn't do a follow man, it is it's butchery. Yeah,
and it's he's treating it like it's some kind of tumor.
It's like, yeah, yeah, I know, I just do that
and then uh, don't worry about it, like that's that's problem.
That'll that'll, that'll take care of it, Like you're not.
It's not again, it's not like you're saying it's butchery.

(40:12):
It's not actual. There's nothing. There's nothing restorative or helpful
or healthy, no about sucking any of it. No. And
it's because it's it's not really based in science, it's
based in morality. He doesn't need to study how his
patients do in the long term when he does stuff
like this, because he knows he's right. It would be
a waste of time to confirm it. Many doctors and

(40:35):
Kellogg's era prescribed female genital mutilation as a treatment for masturbation,
but Kellogg pioneered another treatment the application of carbolic acid
to the sensitive parts of the sexual organs in order
to burn them badly enough that all sensation was permanently deadened.
Jesus Christ, I know this. This is the This is
in some ways maybe the worst one since Georgia Tan. Yeah. Yeah,

(40:59):
it's bad. It's real fucking bad. Didn't we do Georgia
Tan with Sophia? We did. We're just scarring left right, Yeah,
we're gonna break them down. Yeah. Please associate my stoner
reality podcast with this. Check this show out nothing being
high and watching TV like profoundly abusive practices towards probably

(41:24):
tens of thousands of children. Do you think that's that's
the number? I mean, not just we're not just talking
Kellogg here when I I really have no idea, but
it was, it was. He was not the only doctor
doing this like and will because this was you didn't
want to talk about sex. Well, we will never know
how many little girls in this period in the United

(41:44):
States were mutilated in this way. Here's some ads. We're back,
We're back. Um now. I have noted that Kellogg was
not alone in using female genital mu relation is a
treatment for masturbation here, but I should also note that
a huge number of medical professionals railed against the practice,

(42:07):
and that even in Kellogg's day, a significant amount of legitimate,
documented scientific literature pointed to it being a wildly harmful procedure.
This was not uncommon. It was also not universally agreed
upon as healthy. In eighteen sixty eight, when John Harvey
was just fifteen, a gynecologist named Charles Rest wrote a
book called Lectures on the Diseases of Women. In it,

(42:28):
he recalled the story of a fifty three year old
woman who went to a surgeon for anal fissures. The surgeon,
in this case, without getting her permission or asking at all,
also removed her clitterist west In eighteen sixty eight, a
male gynecologist condemned this behavior and wrote it will I
imagine scarcely be contended that proceedings which we should reprobate

(42:48):
if practiced on the one sex, changed their character when
perpetrated on the other. And he's saying, if they'd cut
a guy's dick off, you wouldn't be okay with this.
Why is it okay when it's a clitterist. So there
were people who recognized, there were doctors who recognized how
horrible this was. It was not just the sign of

(43:09):
the times, you know, I mean, like, so what was
it take, Like did the general public need doctors like
that to like even stimulate that kind of thinking for
them to be like, yeah, hold on, maybe that is bad.
Or do you think there were people who I'm sure
I'm hearing that we're also like what the fun I'm
sure there were I'm sure there were plenty of even
like poor illiterate dudes who are like, I'm not going

(43:30):
to let you cut my my my kids up, like
fuck you, like stay the hell away. Yeah, I'm certain
that happened. But obviously those people aren't writing books, and
those people aren't giving lectures that make sure medical schools
like John Harvey Kellogg. You know, John Harvey Kellogg kept
up his devotion to clar erectoms his entire medical career,
even after nineteen twelve, when mainstream medical textbooks began to

(43:53):
condemn the practices not just completely ineffective but liable to
cause the kind of mental health problems that James Harvey
Kellogg blamed on master Nation. The fact that he was
wrong about a great deal of very important things had
no negative impact on John Harvey's sanitarium. This was, unfortunately
due partly to the fact that he was right about
an awful lot. Kellub was a major early proponent of exercise,

(44:14):
which at the time was not widely recognized as beneficial.
He was also way ahead of the curve on gut bacteria.
Medical scientists are only really now starting to get a
handle on how important gut bacteria are to your overall
health health, but in lately, in the late eighteen hundreds
and early nineteen hundreds, doctor John Harvey Kellogg understood, you
know how big a deal it was. He partnered with

(44:34):
Henrie to say, I'm probably some guy, some French fucking guy,
a scientist at the Pasture Laboratory in France, and together
they would study acidophilis, proving he understood how to do
actual rigorous empirical science when he wanted to. Kellogg and
his partner found that people whose guts had acidophilis suffered
far fewer digestive diseases than people who did not, So

(44:55):
he was capable of doing science. Yeah, in that very
strict way. Yeah, all right, if all these people got it,
then that's that means that you know what I mean,
if they're all masturbating, then that's that's a sign. That's
all I need. And then you know it's like the
clock is broken. Clocks right. Kellogg became a huge advocate

(45:16):
of yogurt's health benefits. He became rightfully convinced that the
bacteria and yogurt protected against disease and believed those bacteria
quote should be planted where they are most needed and
may render the most effective service. This of course meant
eating yogurt. But that isn't all at meant miles and
you know the guyness was right, you know what he's this,
He's gonna put it up there. But Kellogg had been

(45:41):
convinced for years that auto intoxication, which we discussed last episode,
was beyond behind all bowel disease. Once he realized that
yogurt could populate the gut with good bacteria, he saw
yogurt as a cure for auto intoxication and the best
way of administering it would be via enema. He would
use his enema machine for this whole court court of
water first, and then gigantic quantities of yogurt up the

(46:03):
ass second. Wow, I mean, at least he had evidence
and that was. There's a lot more evidence that shooting
yogurt up your ass is good than anything than anything
he's ever done in his life. But that's where we're
at with this guy and his patented machine. Obviously, because
he did shooting stuff up his own ass machine which

(46:24):
absolutely wasn't a kink, No, not at all. And this
is custom, custom machinery or not, maybe just repurposed industrial machinery. Yeah,
the machine that he designed to shoot yogurt up his
own ass. Because he started every single day with a
regular enema and a yogurt enema if you're ever expensive,

(46:45):
I mean, he was really wasted. He runs the enema company,
you know, I know, but I mean, like, how much
yogurt are you going through a day there? I think
less than the water, right, I mean like, yeah, gallons
of yogurt. I mean maybe that's a flex if you're
saying like that, I can shoot gallons literally do a
half barrel. Yeah. As a rule, if you're ever wondering

(47:08):
what doctor James John Rvey Kellogg was getting up to
on a specific day in history, you would be safe
in guessing shooting a variety of liquids up his own
ass gut problems were at least as big a part
of the sanitarium's treatments as abuse of sexual procedures. McGill
University writes, quote, There were other options for those who
didn't see the appeal of being pumped full of yogurt
through their rear portals. The Sands mechano Therapy department had

(47:31):
come up with the vibratory chair. This was a spring
loaded device that shook the patient violently to stimulate intestinal peristalis.
Once the toxins had been dislodged in this fashion, headaches
and back aches would disappear, and according to Kellogg, the
body would be filled with a healthy dose of oxygen
and the Sand's coffers would be filled with a heavy
dose of money. The Sand off also offered a variety

(47:52):
of baths cold, hot, and electrified. If this did not
shock the disease out of the unfortunate victim, then Dr
Kellogg resorted to surgery, removing the offending part of the intestine.
Kellogg carried out over twenty two thousands such operations during
his career with a remarkably low complicate complication rate. Probably
not necessary procedures, but at least he was good at it.

(48:17):
Out of him. And what was that based off of
people who were did a lot of off road bugging.
We're really healthy because they were just I just had
the rockiest set in town. I have no idea what
that one was based on. They were just try and
ship past a certain point, you know, like fuck it.

(48:42):
John Harvey Kellogg's pioneering work played a major role in
popularizing yogurt within the Western diet. He was also one
of the first major advocates of soy milk, which he
found was an even better way to propagate acidophilis than yogurt,
and this brings us to Dr Kellogg's most famous and
popular contribution to mankind kfist. John Harvey Kellogg had a brother,
will Keith, who for a time worked with him at

(49:04):
the sanitarium. Together, the two spent years developing foods meant
to replace meat in the diet. Who created a number
of different nut butters, experimented with soy, and looked for
more ways to work whole grains into the American diet.
Dr Kellogg was a big fan of zwyback, a twice
baked biscuit that he felt felt helped people purge toxins,
but Zwyback was so hard that at one point, an

(49:25):
elderly patient at the sanitarium broke her dentures on it
and threatened to sue him if he didn't pay for them.
John Harvey didn't want to pay for more old people's dentures,
so he and his brother Will set to work developing
a way to pound grain and fiber into their patients
without damaging their teeth. Through an incredibly boring process of
trial and error, they arrived at corn flakes. Miguil writes,
quote John Harvey was only interested in the health properties

(49:49):
of the new products. Could these serve as an antidote
to the passion stirred up by meat? But Will was
a businessman and was bent on commercialization. Now I found
a write up on encyclopedia dot com that actually gives
find a good explanation of the fallout that resulted between
John Harvey and his brother Will, who seems like the
only sort of decent member of the family. Um, John
Harvey absolutely comes out as the asshole in this relationship. Quote. Will,

(50:14):
often known as W. K. Kellogg, never had a very
good relationship with his older brother. According to Benjamin Klein,
Hunnicutt and Kellogg six hour day. Famous for his energy
and untiring work, John Harvey cultivated the image of a
superman dictating the secretaries for eight hours at a stretch,
performing operations through the night, conspicuously working at meals and
on trains. John Harvey expected w K to live up

(50:35):
to this myth and berated him for being lazy if
he stole some time at home. When Post began making
millions of dollars through aggressive advertising and free giveaways, w
K wanted to develop a similar large scale advertising campaign.
When his elder brother said no, w K began looking
for ways to take control of the company. Because of
his notorious frugality, John Harvey had convinced employees to accept
lower pay along with stock in the serial business now

(50:57):
known as the Kellogg Toasted corn Flake Company. W K
secured financing from a wealthy St. Louis insurance broker and
quietly began buying stock. By n six, he controlled the company.
So they make a serial company together. But Will does
not get along with his brothers is one thing. His
brothers just shaming him constantly for like having a life
outside of making cereal. You mean, oh I heard you

(51:19):
use pepper. The other day sick fuck well, and Will
is seeing like other serial companies have started develop at
this point, and Will is seeing them advertise and seeing
them add sugar, and he's like, we can make more
money if we do this, And John Harvey Kellogg is like, no,
it's about keeping people boring and yeah, So Will buys
up the company in secret and takes it over from
his brother. The break between John and Will came in

(51:42):
part because Will wanted to add sugar to corn flakes
so human beings would enjoy it. John Harvey thought sugar
would make people come, and he violently opposed the idea.
It is hard to overstate what a huge deal corn
flakes were for society. I found an NPR interview with
an author who wrote a book about the Kellogg brothers,
a guy named Markel, and he does a good job
of explaining just why this was revolutionary. Quote. Making breakfast

(52:04):
was an ordeal. So even if you made porridge or mush,
these whole grains took hours to melt down and then
make into a mush or a soft form. And so
these poor mothers were getting up very early, and they
were probably taking care of their children all night. They
had to start a wood burning fire, and so making
breakfast was a great ordeal. But John Harvey Kellogg invented
them for the involuted people who came to his Battle
Creek Sanitarium. It was his little brother Will who realized,

(52:26):
you know, there are a lot more people who are
healthy and just want a convenient, tasty snack than those
who are ill and eat it need an easily digestible breakfast.
So he had added a little sugar a little salt
to corn flakes, and it just took the world by
storm in nineteen o six because you could simply pour
breakfast out of a box. Even dad could make breakfast. Now,
even dad's suspecting you of jerking off, yea, even dad

(52:48):
who's tired from breaking into your room at night, who
doesn't know how to break his own cycles of abuse
and mistreatment. Ken corn flakes, Jesus. But yeah, that's so
fucking wild, you know. It's it's something like that just
creates all this cover for the name. Now, it's amazing.
I don't know if anyone else we've ever covered with

(53:10):
this incredible mix of outrageous harm done to society and
also helped create things. Every single person listening to this
enjoy it, Like, no matter who you are, he either
created or helped popularize something that that you use regularly,
that you ingest regularly. And that's like, you can't say

(53:30):
that about Hitler, Like overall, right, it doesn't matter that
it's the brand is just at a certain point, it's
just a brand. And then you're back and think, I
don't know, Kelly, genital mutilation, that's serials, cereal, you're not
cutting up people because there's even like that movie The
Road to Wellville, Yeah in the nineties, that's like such

(53:53):
a like I remember, Yeah, they left a lot of
part out that whole thing were really weird. They didn't
include him abusing children. Yeah, yeah, it's just but yeah,
but that's I think, Yeah, we just have this blind
spot for certain ship at times, or maybe they did
see him like we can't do that. It doesn't matter

(54:13):
because nobody knows about podcasts yet where someone will take
the time to research this and it's you know, it's
fucking um. It wasn't easy to research this. It's not
easy to read it to you. Nobody on the call
was having a good time during the portion of the episode.
I expect a decent number of listeners for perfectly reasonable
reason will be like, I can't, I can't do this. Yeah,
I can't. I can't do it, Like whereas a funny

(54:35):
video of a funny movie about cereal man has an
issue with that and thus things get whitewashed and it
has you know, modern consequences. Right now, there's a bunch
of bills being debated and I think some of even
being passed that will allow doctors to like act with
their conscience and refused to treat LGBT people. And it's
the same thing the idea that medicine and morality can

(54:56):
be tied. They shouldn't be exactly like morality and medicine.
It means doing your best to alleviate and treat the
symptoms and and and illnesses of your patients, right like
morality in medicine means nothing more than doing your best
to ensure the health of the people who come to
you for treatment. Your personal opinion shouldn't matter what being
a doctor is. Well, but sometimes you're like, oh, I'm

(55:18):
a monster that you need to use the occupation. Actually, yeah,
i'm a monster. I'm just smart and I'm so cunning
that I realized this is the profession. I need to
get in proximity of people to do what I do.
I think when that guy wrote people first, do no harm,
what he meant was cut up little boys and girls, right, yeah,

(55:40):
uh yeah. And again the reverberations just in our culture.
You know, it's like everywhere, this same mentality of punishing
for getting close to being liberated or understanding something or
something that's counter to what has been biblically preached, um,
and how that leads to just the absolute dehumanization of people.

(56:01):
And like we're still it echoes in the same way
as like you know, slavery does in certain ways of
white supremacy, that if your medicine is was entrenched in
religion like this on some level, that's not going to
still be you know, part of the culture. We're having
a reckoning with ye but I mean yogurt. Yeah, honestly,

(56:23):
I need to know how much and if there was
like if he was he was he cutting the yogurt.
He's telling his pure yogurt, But was he cutting you
know what? Was he pouring in some cocaine with the
yogurt to wear steing? Hey doc, I heard you're stepping
on my yogurt. With buttermell uh. So. Yeah. There were

(56:47):
a number of other significant positive developments that Dr Kellogg
and his sanitarium played a major role in. They were
probably the first major business to make calorie counts and
nutrition facts available for all of the meals they served.
This would be decades before the practice was mandated in
the United States. John Harvey was also a philanthropist. In
three he decided to expand his operation into Chicago. The

(57:08):
city police chief advised him to set up his new
sanitarium and quote the dirtiest and wickedest place in the city,
So he built it in a slum that was heavily
populated by impoverished black people. Um. But the satellite facility
included a free pharmacy and clinic, free baths, free laundry,
and evening school for Chinese language students, and a visiting
nurses service. His cafeteria offered a penny lunch service and

(57:31):
fed an estimated five D six hundred people a day.
So it wasn't all mutilation. You know, free clinics are
good free, well, I don't know. His free clinic is
a mixed bag. Free laundry is good, right, Yeah, I'm sure,
I'm sure he had very evolved ideas on bi racial

(57:52):
We're getting there. Yeah, I was gonna say, I can
can you imagine what this fucking guys doing, being like
I'm gonna service this immunity, Like, We're getting there, buddy.
The success of the sanitarium swelled Dr Kellogg's ego and
led to conflicts with his church. By some accounts, his
break with Ellen White and the Seventh day Adventist faith
started when he caught Sister White eating a piece of

(58:14):
fried chicken. Um. The conflicts between the two of them
went on for years and are more complex than I
can easily summarize, but a lot of it has to
do with Kellogg's occasional embrace of the scientific method. The
bottom line is that he allowed his scientific beliefs to
sometimes contradict the teachings of his prophet. He was accused
of blasphemy and this fellowship in nineteen o seven. One

(58:35):
of the beliefs that got Kellogg and trouble was a
partial acceptance of evolutionary theory. Unfortunately for everyone, John Harvey's
embrace of evolution was mainly a corollary to his embrace
of eugenics. From a wonderful and comprehensive write up in
Dr Kellogg's own local paper, The Battle Creek Inquirer. Quote
kellogg support of eugenics was tepid to begin with, likely

(58:56):
due to eugenicss ties to Darwinism, and his connection to
the Seventh Day Adventist Church, which teaches a literal interpretation
if the sixth day, sixth day creation story in Genesis.
It wasn't until his break from the church in n
seven that he began to truly embrace the ideas. Kellog
combined his belief in eugenics his the improvement of human
functioning by improvement of living conditions to come up with

(59:16):
his own brand of eugenics he referred to as race betterment,
the things he had advocated avoiding through his biologic living
meat and alcohol redeemed race poisons. Race, that's some Nazi
ship poisons, race betterment, race poisons, of course, that's what

(59:39):
you know. I mean, like, it's so, honestly, is he
one of the I'll let you go on, But I'm like,
I wonder, deep down, we would have been fine if
this motherfucker died, Like we would have been absolutely somebody
was going to give us. Somebody was going to figure
out serial Yeah, he figured out the acid ship with
some other dude. Yeah, you know what I mean, I

(01:00:01):
would have figured that out with that. You know what,
this is such like you know it? Fuck, you know,
you're not special. Getting into the fact that he basically
created the cultural space for guys like Dr Fell and
Doctor Oz to the celebrity doctors, he's a big bay
that as well. You know, um, not the only race betterment,

(01:00:25):
race betterment, race poisons races. Oh thank you, yeah baby,
to save these people. Now, yeah, it's interesting that that
last line I just read was basically word for word
Nazi propaganda, because Dr Kellogg was not a Nazi. Now,
the precise nature of his racism is fascinating to puzzle out.

(01:00:46):
He is a We can talk a bit about the
kind of racist that he is. He's an interesting kind
of racist, say that. Yeah. Yeah. Dr Brian Wilson, who
wrote the book that was a major source for Part one,
seemed to have seems to have framed his bigotry as
a natural evolution of his theories on biologic living. He
saw selective breeding as the same thing as avoiding meat

(01:01:09):
and masturbation. Quote. Overall, Kellogg was worried about the ultimate
fate of the human race. Kellogg believed quote, if we
continue on with our bad habits, we would eventually become
extinct potentially. So there was this larger issue of the
human race. But if you drill down a little bit
more in his public statements, it's pretty clear that he
was really concerned about the white race. John Harpey agreed

(01:01:30):
with Teddy Roosevelt that white people were committing race suicide
by allowing inferior races into the country. These races included
Black and Asian people, but also people from the bad
parts of Europe, like Italy. In the nineteen teens, Kellogg
melded a warning against race mixing into his theory of
biologic living. The Battle Creek Choirer notes that his beliefs

(01:01:50):
on eugenics were often at odds with how he ran
his business in personal life, which is part of why
I think he's an interesting kind of racist. Quote. He
rejected segregation of blacks at the at his sanitarium, where
African American doctors and nurses were trained. He and his
wife Ella Eaton fostered more than forty children, among them
African Americans and children from Latin America. Kellogg took great

(01:02:12):
care of sojourn or truth during her visits to the sanitarium,
reportedly grafting some of his own skin to her leg
to treat an ulcer, and he personally invited Booker T.
Washington to visit as a guest in nineteen ten. So
again that's not how do you ever see on that
skin graph? I desinitely some pre internet you could be like,

(01:02:33):
you know, I got your skin disjournal treat so I'm not.
I literally put my skin on her. I took my
skin and donated it. I mean, the point when I
say he's not a Nazi isn't to like whitewash him
at all, is to say that, like, you can be
extremely racist, did not be a Nazi like Teddy Roosevelt.

(01:02:54):
Not a Nazi monster, you know, just because it's not.
It's because the hate is warped in this weird you
know betterment exactly your bedroom. Oh no, I'm not saying
I'm saying it's racist. That I'm saying you're flawed to
begin with. And then what I'm saying is I'm hopeful
for you we can make your race better, not as

(01:03:16):
good at white people, but better as opposed to Nazis
who say we should exterminate you. I mean, if you
guys would stay off that race poison. And I think
that's what that other facility is for. Even though he's
running it, he's observing and collected data, and I'm sure
that's for him. It's not really it says nothing charitable
about it, Like there's clearly something that yes, he'll be like, well,

(01:03:37):
it's fine outwardly that it's a help, but really I'm
here to make observations that reinforce my racist worldview. Yes, yes,
and yeah, it's one of those things. Yes, he was
a he was a monstrous bigot. Um. He wrote in
nineteen o two, quote, the intellectual inferiority of the Negro
mail to the European mail is universally acknowledged. This guy

(01:03:58):
you knew book or T Washington it um, Yeah, you
know what, you know what you know who book or T.
Washington was smarter than the guy who thought sleep was poison. Yeah,
I mean this is, but like it's also like the
you know, dawn of like this insidious sort of you know,
will later be like deracialized concerned troll racism, because it's

(01:04:23):
still the same thing. Even though you're not espousing violence
to begin with it. When you start from there, the
premises violent, that's where it's just like, come like really though,
the Race Betterment Foundation, come on, yeah, the Race Betterment Foundation. Yeah. Now,
under Kellogg and under his Race Betterment Foundation, the Sanitarium

(01:04:46):
would actually play host to three international eugenics conferences. At these,
Kellogg advocated for eugenics registry nationwide that could be used
to establish what he called racial thoroughbreads. He advised p
well to consult medical records to determine their racial makeup
before getting married. And like all eugenicists, he supported the
sterilization of defectives, including criminals. Under his advisement, the Michigan

(01:05:11):
State Legislature passed Public Act thirty four, which authorized the
sterilization of quote defective persons. Under this law, at least
thirty eight hundred people were involuntarily sterilized. When I guess
what that law was repealed, Miles, probably not to like
the last thirty years at at Night Teams seventy four.
I guess we did better than you thought. Yeah, yeah,

(01:05:33):
because it's so I mean, and again that's another thing
that look, how long the fucking takes like something that's
so on its face disgusting that it's like, yeah, oh yeah,
we should probably stop doing that. But then also thinking
of how like even you know, women and especially women
of color, the pain thresholds are not taken seriously by
doctors to this day, And you think, oh wow, because

(01:05:57):
we were fucking yipping with doctor corn Funk over here.
Dr corn Funk, I mean I don't I'm not enough.
I'm not an expert on Dr Kellogg, so I don't
know if he ever, like we talked liter earlyer, he
definitely thought that if you are giving someone like a
surgery to stop masturbation, you shouldn't use pain medication because
it's a healthy punishment. I wonder if maybe some of

(01:06:20):
the belief that you don't need to give black people
the same amount of pain killers was rooted in that
idea too, that idea of like, well, if they're unhealthy,
it's their fault and we should correct them by not
I I have no idea, or it's just a habit
that becomes like culture, a cultural norm within medicine, with
no examination of what that actually means. It's like this,
that's why it takes people so long to fucking like

(01:06:43):
stop for a second and look at your patterns and
be like, oh, ship, where is this from? What does
this mean? But so many people are unwilling to do that. Yep.
I mean, it's one of those things. And it gets
so deeply because like black doctors under prescribe pain killers
to black patients, just like black ops when they do
these like they'll have these games were like you have
to shoot someone who There's like a bunch of people

(01:07:05):
flash on the screen. Some have guns, some don't. Black
cops are more likely to shoot unarmed black people, like
then they're unarmed white people. It's just like that's how
it works because mental colonization and internalized white supremacy, you
know what I mean, that's what it does. It's it's
that's how fucking pervasive it is. Yep, yep. The conferences

(01:07:25):
that Dr Kellogg held were bizarre affairs. One featured booker T. Washington,
who gave a speech on the Negro race to a
white audience where he begged for equal treatment and argued
for the common humanity of all men. At the same event,
John Harvey Kellogg said this, if the human race is degenerating,
then we should know it. We should let the people know,
and we should see what ought to be done about it. Okay,

(01:07:48):
this isn't climate change, motherfucker. Yeah no, I bet it
wouldn't have believed in climate change the way he said
the other thing before that. Yeah, he said he said
that before Booker T. Washington got on. So book Or
T goes on on his friend, Yeah, and gives a
speech that seems to have mostly been about being like, hey,
if you if you like, help black people out. We

(01:08:08):
we can contribute to society. We're Americans too, like we
want to we want to contribute to the country, but
we need to like not be as as horribly abused
by the system as we currently are, right because y'all
aren't past slavery still, so that we're still getting this version. Yeah,
and that was the same thing where I mean, I
guess he got booked by Kellogg. But Kellogg went on

(01:08:30):
to talk about, like we have to talk about racial
degeneracy and race poison and race mixing. It. It's weird.
He's like I said, he's a weird kind of racist,
but he's definitely a racist, yeah, because he's just all
over the place. But he's just like because he's just
he's a concerned roll racist, he's and he's Yeah, there's
some ways I know that you mentioned that where he
is a lot like the modern racist to be like, well, no,
I have look at my black friend, like I'm advocating

(01:08:53):
against white genocide, but I have I'm friends with Ali
Alexander whoever, Like like, yeah, maybe maybe he was just
the first, Like really, post Nazi white supremacists first got
to figure it out, like no, you can't do all that,
you can't look at that, you gotta be like no, well,
all all I'm saying is maybe the white race is degenerating, okay,

(01:09:16):
and maybe we need to look at that and then
maybe then we can figure out what to do about that.
I don't know, I don't know. I'm just saying what
do I know? Well, fucking just demonic fuck. And I
will say there were other eugenicists in this period Nazis
who were saying similar things. So I'm not gonna say
Kellogg was the first person, but he definitely not. Like

(01:09:37):
now that the more I think about it, the more
his racism feels extremely modern to me, if that makes sense. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
you're right. The First Race Betterment Conference, which is what
these These events were called included a Better Babies contest,
where five thousand children were inspected, measured, and judged based

(01:09:58):
on their purported race characteristics. Wait, someone listening is going
to have a great grandparent who won the Better Babies contest,
And I'm excited to learn that, like a fucking Westminster
Abbey dog show. Yeah, it seems like it like it's
you know what it sounds kind of like is that?

(01:10:18):
Um uh, I think you should leave the sketch where
they have the baby off the Year award, but you're
saying they're using but it was all kinds of different
races of babies. Yeah, where they were like assess, yeah,
how well they write so like a dog show. So
there's breed of human being based on my physiognomy chart here, Uh,

(01:10:40):
this is what this? He's got the perfect Nordic lips. Yeah,
what the fuck? Yeah. The conference was a huge success,
which convinced Kellog that he needed to host the next
one on the West coast because eugenics didn't really catch
on on the West coast the same way did on
the East coast. Um, which I guess it's good for
the West coast. Yeah, congratulations California. We just have Yeah,

(01:11:09):
it's a little bit different here, it's the same brand,
different style. The conference was hosted in San Francisco, and
it was part of a wider effort by Kellogg to
inculcate his eugenic ideas throughout the nation. As time went on,
he grew into more of a hardliner, increasingly committed to
sterilization and segregation. Gradually he fell behind the times, do
largely to a little thing cold World War two, coming

(01:11:32):
face to face with Nazi ideology, which was inspired in
large part by American eugenicists like Kellogg, led to a
collapse in American support for eugenics. You see the Nazis
doing Nazi ships saying the same thing American eugenicists are,
And suddenly a lot of people are like, oh, you
know what, Wait, maybe this is bad. Wait a second,
hey man, this you this you It looks like this

(01:11:55):
ends with people in ovens reconsider something. Maybe if we
just look around, our race is deteriorating and maybe there's
a problem we need a solution to. I'm just saying,
you know what I mean, seems like it inevitably leads there. Now.

(01:12:16):
Harvey Kellogg was also a very old man by the
upbreak of the war, but Nazism did not change his
opinions on eugenics whatsoever. He grew only more convinced that
Christian civilization was at risk and that the white races
were on the edge of genocide. He wrote in nineteen
forty two that he believed God quote, working through eugenics
and the marvelous germ plasm, which is like sperm, may

(01:12:38):
save the race and even improve it. So he had
faith that eventually people would figure out how to save
the white race. Kellop was in the middle of planning capitalism.
He was in the middle of planning his fourth Race
Betterment Conference set for June of nineteen forty two when
Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. The conference was canceled, and so

(01:12:58):
too was John Harvey Kellogg his own life. He died
on December in Battle Creek, Michigan. He died, of course,
a virgin, despite being married for more than forty years.
John Harvey Kellogg brag that he had never actually consummated
his marriage. So if I had to pick one purely
good thing about his life, I'd say at least he
didn't breed mm hmm, wow. True but fuck if he

(01:13:21):
didn't completely funk up kids. Amazing, one of the worst
people we've ever talked about. When is there, like, you know,
some kind of reckoning do they just say, oh, it's
it's actually named after his brother. You can go to
any grocery store in the country and see his name
all over the place. You know what I mean. I

(01:13:42):
guess you can also think that his brother hated him,
and he would have hated the fact that those are
now filled with sugars, So I guess that's good. Like
John Harvey Kellogg would be horrifically disgusted by the fact
that his legacy is now incredibly sugar like candy for
children to eat in the morning and and mash surbation
is through the roof. If masturbation is at an all

(01:14:04):
time hot, if he thinks sleeping comfortably and eating spice,
I'm gonna, you know what, tonight, I'm gonna eat the
hottest fucking thing I can imagine masturbate on the most
comfortable bed. Yeah, all of you at home, come and curry.
In order to really really fully shame Dr James Hart,
break his break his undead spirit eats spice, come hard.

(01:14:30):
That's a T shirt. There you go. You're welcome, snice,
come hard exactly, this big middle finger to him. Can
we put come on a T shirt, Sophie, that's a
loaded question? Yeah, loads, Uh, I feel like not. I
think we do it, eat spice, come hard exactly and

(01:14:52):
now and now because I think that's the next thing
is come as an accepted thing on a shirt you are.
That's how that's our little act rebellion against John Harvey Kellog.
If I had a time machine, top of my list
now would be to get uh like to archive a
bunch of Red Tube videos along with information and how
many hundreds of millions of views that it gets in

(01:15:12):
a year and just present those both like, hey, John,
in the future, more people than exist on the world
right now are masturbating on just this one website. Buddy,
you lose that war. And I would bring a fucking
like a military foot locker filled with sex toys. Yeah yeah,
just like, First of all, dude, this thing this is tenda.

(01:15:33):
You ever heard of a tenda? All right? So this
is from Japan and you might remember them from Pearl Harbor.
So they got so this is some really sick technology.
This is another one you can use your app. Hold on,
I've even shown you the VR goggles yet, motherfucker. Like
who knows. It's just this is a plastic butt that
people make just to have sex with. You can buy it.

(01:15:55):
You can. There's two different stores that sell them within
walking distance of my house. You can. And if you
want to make a mold of your genitals and have
it replicated mid millions of times like a fucking you know,
like the Guttenberg Press. You know what people did with
the Bible in your day, they do it with genitals

(01:16:16):
in the future. People are so horny John Harvey that
when a boat got stuck in the Suez Canal, you
you know the Suez Canal, it's do in your day,
when a boat got stuck in it, people immediately turned
the boat in the porn. Yeah, exactly, straight off the bat,
John Harvey. That's how it works. Yeah. It's funny. When
you search Kellogg's for the Wikipedia page, it's will Keith Kellogg,

(01:16:39):
who which makes sense because he did steal the idea,
But then they can't avoid in the first sentence that
it is his brother. John Harvey. Kellogg became blah blah
blah blah blah. So yeah, what a fucking yeah, you know,
it's like everything there's so many corporate like just like
every fucking bank you know has had to deal in
slave money, but everything bank at some point supported the
nazis pretty Yeah, it's just what you know, like, this

(01:17:01):
is where we're at that they can people like, I
don't know, it's a want. Look, it's just a serial now.
But yeah, I mean in some ways you could you
could say that Kelloggs is his legacy is less fucked
up than the banks because there was a split over,
like like the reason the Kellogg's company became what it
is is his brother fucking hated him, right, so that's good. Yeah, Yeah, anyway, Yeah,

(01:17:22):
we're what's what's JP Morgan? What's his? Uh? What's John
Pierre Morgan's brother? Like, Oh, I don't know, but did
you have a brother? Morgan Jr. Was a big part
of the fascist attempt to overthrow the business blotto. Yeah,
what a time, what a time, good times we're heading
And again you have a bunch of people, in their
own way, found their own attempt to try and steer

(01:17:46):
the whatever the fucking course was of this country based
on what these fucked up ideas they had, uh, yikes,
a lesson to be learned. Perhaps, Yeah, you know, Miles,
I guess if I had one last request for our listeners.
I know a few of you were great artists. What
we could really use is some just filthy John Harvey

(01:18:10):
Kellogg themed pornography, just absolutely depraved. And by depraved, I
mean him having missionary style sex with the woman he
was married to for decades. It's him, it's him masturbating
by candle light. Yeah, yeah, John Harvey Kellogg masturbating by
candle light to I don't know, the crucible. What fucking bastards.

(01:18:34):
You've done it again, Robert, you've done it again. How
you doing, Miles? How you doing? Sophie? I hate my life.
This was a rough one, right, this was a real
bad one. Yeah, I mean, but you know this is again,
this is These are the things. I think that's that's
the benefit of this show, you know, like, yeah, if
you have to really look back and know how bad

(01:18:57):
ship was truly to be able to us work, give
yourself some context, you know what I mean, And to
know like how people move and operate in the social
forces they used to justify and popularize their methods. Yep,
and I I don't know. Some great news just on
that front today for the first time, a gallop pole
just reviewed us membership in a church, synagogue or mosque

(01:19:19):
has fallen below Only scent of millennials belong to a church.
And of course the drop in religious affiliation is directly
correlated with the rise in support for same sex marriage,
and one has to assume the rise and support for
master baiting. Yeah exactly where generation come? Yeah? Generation come.

(01:19:45):
That's a t shirt John Harvey Kellogg masturbating to the
Crucible by candle light with generation come right on. That's
busy or just some dog tax generation. Let's make it
happen people. All right, Well, Miles, you got any plug
doubles man, just check out the podcast Daily's like Geist

(01:20:06):
and also look, if if you want something that isn't
tied to maybe the news and politics, check out the
other podcast four twenty Day Fiance. We're talking about ninety
day Fiance. But you know, like hi, so yeah, just
chill with Sophia Alexandra, you know, one of the one
of your your fan favorites. Yeah, we we love Sophia. Um,

(01:20:29):
I'm glad that it was you and not her on yet.
Another horrible child abuse episode, because that would have been
a war crime. Yeah, alright, well we're done with the episode.
Go stare blankly into the setting sun and try not
to think about all of the horrible things that John

(01:20:50):
Harvey Kellogg did in the name of medicine. Eat spice,
come hard, Eat spice, come hard.

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