29. Another bowl of cornflakes anyone ?

Key words/phrases: Origin of cornflakes, Battle Creek, Michigan, Seventh Day Adventists, Auto-intoxication, Christopher & Constance wards at West Hill Hospital, Stone House Hospital, Orchard House (Psychiatric Unit).

Post:

Did you know that cornflakes were created by accident and that they were first used as a non-stimulating meal for patients in a mental hospital in Michigan, USA ?

Records show that a certain Dr. John H. Kellogg took up a Staff Physician’s post at Battle Creek Sanatorium in 1876 - when he was 24 years old - and that he served there until he was 62 years old, retiring as the Medical Superintendent.

The corn flakes it seems were produced by accident in 1894 when he and his brother Will left some cooked wheat sitting uncovered in the hospital kitchen while they attended to some other matters. When they returned the wheat had gone dry but because the hospital was on such a tight budget they decided to continue to process it by forcing it through a set of kitchen rollers in order to try and obtain some sheets of wheat dough. To their surprise what they got instead were flakes which they then decided to toast in an oven and then serve to their patients, adding milk but no sugar.

On May 31 1895, the Kellogg brothers filed a patent application for "Flaked Cereals and Process of Preparing the Same" and this was granted in 1896 under the trade name “Granose”.

Nowadays we would obviously consider this a very strange contribution to the treatment of the mentally ill patients but Dr Kellogg was obviously pleased to have an extra dish to use within the dietary component of his treatment regime. His brother though was more interested in making money and Will Kellogg - much to the disapproval of his medically qualified brother - went on to buy up the commercial rights for corn flakes, sweetened them with malt and then established The Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flake Company in 1906.

But what was he doing in the hospital kitchen with the cooked wheat in the first place ?

Apparently he was a member of the Seventh Day Adventists, a religious sect who sometimes experimented with new foods and dishes to in order to improve on their strict vegetarian obligations, the same strict vegetarian regimen that he imposed on his patients?

Kellogg forbade his mentally ill patients alcohol, tobacco, caffeine and denied them all spicy and sweet foods because of the likelihood that these would “inflame their passions”. Thus the diet that he imposed upon them consisted entirely of bland foods - including his new product, cornflakes - all of which he believed would have a sexually calming effect.

Kellogg was an early advocate of physical exercise and "biologic living"and he also opposed any type of sexual activity whatsoever. In fact he openly acknowledged that he had never made, and would never, make love to his wife.

It seems that he was also obsessed about the “auto-intoxication” of the human bowel and with the need for elimination. “Ninety percent of all illness originates in the stomach and bowel", he explained and so he also made sure that every patient was treated with enemas using an enema machine. However if the symptoms of their physical or mental illness persisted he would surgically remove stretches of intestine and Kellogg was said to have sometimes performed as many as twenty such operations per day.

The results, he claimed, were nothing short of a medical revolution and Kellogg argued that by this mixture of methods he had managed to cure "cancer of the stomach, ulcers, diabetes, schizophrenia, manic depressives, acne, anaemia, asthenia, migraine and premature old age."

50-60 years later patients from the Dartford area requiring psychiatric care were - in the main - cared for, either in Constance and Christopher wards of West Hill Hospital, or in nearby Stone House psychiatric hospital where new drug treatments and electro-convulsive therapy were being used to help to improve patient’s conditions.

By the time the mid 60’s had arrived the General Nursing Council for England & Wales also required SRN student nurses to spend 12 week placements at Stone House Hospital, in order to gain some insight into the care of people suffering from emotional and psychological problems. But in March 1969 a new psychiatric unit was opened in Blocks 18 and 19 of Joyce Green Hospital with enough beds for 40 women and 14 men plus the associated living and therapy facilities.

Perhaps some of you reading this entry have memories of Orchard House, as it became known, although I doubt that any of you will recall giving patients there cornflakes with milk to calm them down !