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CREEK IDEA 
EHIND the Battle Creek Sanitarium as it 
stands today, the first and it is believed the 
most complete institution of its kind in the 
world, is the continuous effort and ac- 
cumulated experience of nearly half a 
century. Governed by the law of enduring growth, 
it had its origin in small beginnings and devel- 
oped gradually but surely to its present large di- 
mensions. As in most other cases, too, in which true and 
permanent success has blessed an undertaking, its good 
fortune must be attributed mainly to the principles by 
which it has stood steadfastly throughout its history— 
principles now known familiarly throughout the civilized 
world as “The Battle Creek Idea.” 
The Secret of the Battle Creek Sanitarium 
The success and world-wide repute of the Battle Creek 
Sanitarium has not been due to any all-healing spring, 
extraordinary climatic advantages, secret remedy, panacea, 
or fad of any kind. The magnet which has drawn so 
many thousands of patients every year to the Sanitarium 
from every quarter of the globe has been simply the 
fundamental principle of curing by natural means, applied 
completely and systematically, and with scientific sanity 
and precision. g?fe BATTLE 
CRJLEK. IDEA 
The Battle Creek Sanitarium is everywhere recog- 
nized as the leading representative of physiotherapy, or 
healing by natural means, because here first of all were 
gathered together and organized into a scientific system 
the various natural healing agencies which previously had 
been employed separately and empirically. But the 
principles and methods embodied in what is known as the 
Battle Creek Idea did not originate in Battle Creek. 
They are old as the race, older even than civilization as 
we know it; for untutored savages of prehistoric times 
knew and made use of the healing resources of nature. 
So, indeed, have the wild animals for untold ages. Civi- 
lized man, unfortunately, has wandered so far away from 
the straight path of simple, healthful life for which he was 
intended that he has largely lost sight of the value of 
the kindly forces of Nature, and in his blindness and 
ignorance has come to trust too implicitly in the artificial 
methods of his own devising. The wiser minds of every 
epoch have regretted this, and many have been the efforts 
to recover the lost companionship with Nature. Two of 
these efforts, one in the life of old Greece, the other in 
our own America of a recent generation, are worth noting 
as precursors of the Battle Creek movement. S?fe BATTLE 
CELEEK IDEA 
Forerunners of the Battle Creek Idea 
More than two thousand years ago, Pythagoras, the 
celebrated Grecian philosopher, gathered about him sev- 
eral hundred disciples and founded a city of health, 
where the “return-to-nature” life was strictly followed. 
Abstinence from all unwholesome foods, especially flesh 
meats, temperance in all things, an active, out-of-door 
life, simple dress, purity and uprightness in conduct, were 
the ideals of this model community. Unfortunately the 
health city came to an untimely end, owing to the prej- 
udice and misunderstanding of ignorant neighbors; but 
the principles survived. 
About the middle of the nineteenth century, a remark- 
able group of New England men and women joined hands 
for the purpose of realizing the Pythagorean ideal of a 
“return-to-nature” community. Among the hundred or 
more who associated in die “Brook Farm Experiment” 
were some of the most brilliant leaders in the intellectual 
life of America: Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, 
Charles Dana, George Ripley, Bronson Alcott, Mar- 
garet Fuller, and others. They gathered on a farm near 
Roxbury, Mass., and lived the life of harmony with 
nature as closely as they could. The community was 
broken up because of inefficient financial management, 
but the experiment had a lasting influence for good upon GEe BATTLE 
CREEK IDEA 
thousands of those who knew of it. Many years later, 
Bronson Alcott, the Concord philosopher, and Wendell 
Phillips, America’s greatest orator, visited the Battle 
Creek Sanitarium as guests at different times, and recog- 
nized in the dietary and the general plans and principles 
of the institution the altruistic ideals which gave rise to 
the Brook Farm experiment, and to which for fifty years 
they had personally adhered although the organized effort 
had failed. Bronson Alcott related to the Sanitarium 
family of patients and attendants many details of their 
simple life. His daughter, Louisa M. Alcott, the 
authoress, with the “little women,” of whom she wrote, 
were all brought up strictly in accord with the dietetic 
principles embodied in what is now known as the Battle 
Creek Diet System. 
Origin of the Battle Creek Movement 
In 1866 a small group of earnest, high-principled men, 
who believed in altruism and human progress, started a 
return-to-nature movement in Battle Creek, Michigan, 
with aims and principles closely akin to those of Pytha- 
goras and Brook Farm. Their object was to preach and 
practice the natural way in diet, in dress, in the care of 
the sick—in all that pertained to human life and welfare. 
To spread their reform, they started a monthly health S?fe BATTLE 
[citEEK IDEA 
journal, still flourishing under the name of Good Health; 
and soon after they purchased a small two-story farm- 
house in a grove at one end of the village, and opened up 
their central institution for the cure of the sick. This was 
the acorn, as it might be called, from which has grown 
the sturdy oak of the Battle Creek Sanitarium. 
In its earliest days the institution put its chief reliance 
upon water as a curative agent, and was known as a 
“water cure,” like many other institutions of the kind 
throughout Europe and America. The healing virtues of 
water had then come into very wide prominence, owing to 
the remarkable success of Priessnitz with his water cure at 
Graefenberg, to which invalids flocked from all over the 
world. Similar enterprises sprang up everywhere and 
water became the panacea for every ailment, though ap- 
plied so crudely and indiscriminately that some harm as 
well as much good was often done. The Battle Creek 
“water cure” attracted a considerable number of pa- 
tients; and some small additions to the original buildings 
were soon made. 
The high purpose of the founders was shown by the 
fact that very soon after incorporating the enterprise, they 
surrendered all private interest in the earnings and de- 
voted them to charitable uses; and ever since the institu- 
tion has been conducted as a public philanthropy, sup- g?fo BATTLE 
CREEK IDEA 
ported by its earnings and by the contributions of its 
physicians and managers. 
Reorganization on the Scientific Basis 
During the first decade of its existence, after an en- 
couraging beginning, the institution made but slow pro- 
gress. In 1876 the present management took charge of 
the enterprise and a thorough reorganization was effected 
on a broad and scientific basis. The empirical methods of 
the old-fashioned water cure were superseded by rational 
hydrotherapy, and as rapidly as possible new methods, 
appliances, and apparatus were added, in the effort to 
create an institution which would show in practical opera- 
tion all the resources of physiologic medicine. 
The Birth of the “Sanitarium” 
At that time there existed no institution in any way 
comparable to the model which the new management 
started out to create—an institution which should combine 
the comforts of the home and the hotel with the medical 
advantages of the hospital and the added facilities and 
equipment requisite for the administration of baths of 
every description, electricity in its different forms, medical 
gymnastics, and other curative means, with careful regula- 
tion of diet and living. 6?fe BATTLE 
CREEK, IDEA 
This new kind of institution demanded a new name. 
The original name of the water cure. Western Health 
Reform Institute, was too formidable and unappealing. 
Reference to the dictionary showed that the word “Sana- 
torium” was then in use in England to designate a health 
resort for invalid soldiers. A change of two letters trans- 
formed “Sanatorium” into “Sanitarium,” and a new 
word was thus added to the language to designate the 
new institution which combined in one the home, the 
hotel, the hospital, and the health resort. 
The various changes effected, including radical im- 
provement in the equipment, the establishment of a train- 
ing school for nurses, and the organization of a corps of 
scientifically trained physicians, rapidly won the con- 
fidence of both the medical profession and the public, so 
that within a few months one hundred patients were under 
treatment and the management began the erection of a 
building especially adapted to sanitarium work, the first 
of the kind, and capable of accommodating two hundred 
guests. 
A Mecca for Health-Seekers 
Within a year the new structure was dedicated (1878) 
and was at once filled to its utmost capacity. As a re- 
sult of the efficient application of the new principles. 
Battle Creek soon came to be widely known as a Mecca @fe BATTLE 
CHEEK IDEA 
for health-seekers, who thronged the place in increasing 
numbers, summer and winter, until the number of patients 
and guests reached an aggregate of more than fifty thou- 
sand, with an annual total of six or seven thousand. To 
provide for these constant increases, new structures have 
been added, at intervals of four or five years, until the 
Sanitarium buildings now number some thirty in all, 
accommodating nearly a thousand patients and 'six or 
seven hundred employees. 
This rapid increase in patronage was accompanied by 
a great expansion in scope, resources, scientific methods, 
and beneficent work. The financial success of the institu- 
tion made it possible to improve the facilities for treat- 
ment very materially. The appliances and facilities for 
medical care and treatment were soon supplemented by 
research laboratories in which cases of disease were studied 
and original researches carried on for the purpose of de- 
termining the dietetic values and properties of foods, the 
effects of various baths, and the applications of light, elec- 
tricity, massage and medical gymnastics. 
In popular usage, the “Battle Creek Idea” has come 
to denote everything that the Battle Creek Sanitarium 
System involves; but more strictly speaking, the Battle 
Creek Idea means simply the philosophy or sound com- 
mon sense underlying and guiding the Battle Creek 
Sanitarium methods. &7?e BATTLE 
CELEEK IDEA 
The Philosophy of Getting Well 
In these days, when prophets of healing are rising in 
every direction, when mind curists, magnetic healers and 
other layers on of hands, along with patent medicine 
fakirs and nostrum vendors, are fattening upon the gulli- 
bility of the public, it is essential that the invalid should 
obtain, if possible, a clearly defined idea of the nature of 
the healing process, so that he may be able to distinguish 
truth from falsehood and fact from humbug in so-called 
healing methods. 
The fundamental principle of the Battle Creek Idea is 
that expressed by Dietl, a pupil of the famous German 
pathologist, Rokitanski: “Nature alone can cure: this is 
the highest law of practical medicine, and the one to which 
we must adhere. . . . Nature creates and maintains; 
she must therefore be able to cure.” 
The healing power is in the blood. It is the blood that 
heals, or rather, it is the creative power which formed the 
body and which repairs the waste created by the wear 
and tear of life. It is this same power which restores dis- 
ordered functions and repairs damaged tissue. Physicians 
do not and cannot heal. Medicines, baths, and other so- 
called remedial measures are powerless to heal. All that 
physicians and remedies can do is to aid in removing 
causes of disease and supplying favorable conditions. 16J& BATTLE 
CPJLEK IDEA 
Physiological remedies, such as water, electricity, 
massage, exercise, sunlight, and regulation of diet and 
clothing, possess a wonderful controlling influence over the 
healing powers of the body by regulating the movements 
of the blood, the greatest of all remedial agencies; and by 
stimulating and controlling the vital activities by which 
the healing process is carried on. 
The body is its own physician, or rather, the living, 
creative energy which dwells in every human being is the 
healer as well as creator of the body; the office of the 
physician or nurse is simply to cooperate with this healing 
power by the use of those agencies which scientific experi- 
ment and practical experience have shown to be most 
potent and permanently efficacious. 
The Physiologic Method of Assisting Nature 
The true remedies for disease, or rather the true aids 
to recovery, are those measures which are essential to the 
maintenance of health, for the body in disease is essentially 
the same as the body in health. Said the great Virchow, 
one of the most eminent of modern physicians: “Diseases 
are not entities that have entered into the body; they are 
not parasites that take root in the body; they merely show 
us the course of the vital processes under altered con- 
ditions.” BATTLE 
CREEK idea 
In disease the body requires special assistance, but not 
different in kind from that which it receives in health. The 
means by which health is maintained are the most effective 
measures for recovering health when lost. 
Nature has no “cure-alls,” no “short cuts,” no magical 
methods, no panaceas. Water, air, sunshine, heat, natural 
diet and natural living—these are the agents essential to 
the maintenance of vigorous, efficient life, and these are 
the agents which accomplish the most in the cure of dis- 
ease. The use of these and other natural or physiological 
agents as remedies constitutes the physiologic method in the 
treatment of disease, or physiotherapy. By the aid of 
science, these measures have been rescued from empiricism 
and gradually organized into a complete rational system 
of therapeutics, as shown in practical operation at the 
Battle Creek Sanitarium, 
Patients, Not Maladies, Must be Cured 
The aim of the physiologic method is to cure patients, 
not diseases. Most chronic invalids have had their dis- 
eases cured many times by means of nostrums and medi- 
cines of various sorts; “dyspepsia cures,” “kidney cures,” 
and “liver cures” of every variety have been tried, but 
without avail. Nerves have been toned up by tonics and 
toned down by anodynes until they no longer respond to safe BATTLE 
CREEK IDEA 
medication. It is easy to cure pain by administering a 
narcotic or an anesthetic. Insomnia may be cured by a 
sleep-producing drug. But the pain cured by a narcotic 
returns as soon as the effect of the drug is gone, and 
sleeplessness cured by a hypnotic is followed by depression 
and increased insomnia. 
Remedies which only cure symptoms usually make the 
patient worse in the end. 
Most chronic ailments being due to wrong habits or 
unwholesome conditions of life, no cure can be permanent 
which does not correct these habits and conditions. Pallia- 
tive drugs afford temporary relief, but they cannot cure. 
A permanent cure requires a change in the patient, a 
regeneration of tissue, a complete body transformation, 
such as can he secured in no other way than by the physio- 
logic method. 
Attacking the Causes of Disease 
The physiologic method concerns itself first of all with 
causes. In the case of chronic maladies, these will gener- 
ally be found in erroneous habits of life, which, through 
long operation, have resulted in depreciation of the vital 
forces of the body and such derangement of the bodily 
functions that the natural defenses have been finally broken 
down and morbid conditions have been established. S?fe BATTLE 
CREEK IDEA 
It is not disease, then, but the causes of disease that 
must be attacked if a permanent cure is looked for. 
As Hericourt, the eminent French physician, has so 
well pointed out, the man who is recognized to be suf- 
fering from chronic disease, even though the malady may 
be said to be in an incipient state, has really been ill for 
some time. The existence of chronic disease is evidence of 
the long-continued operation of subtle causes which have 
gradually consumed the patient’s vital capital, wiped out 
his margin of safety, and established definite pathological 
conditions. 
The Chronic Invalid Like a House on Fire 
Chronic disease is like a fire in the walls of a house 
which has slowly worked its way from the foundation up- 
ward, until the flames have burst out through the roof. 
The appearance of the flame is the first outward indication 
of the mischief which has been going on; but it is not the 
beginning. It is rather the end of the destructive process. 
Thousands of men and women who look well, feel well, 
and suppose themselves to be well, have these hidden 
fires of chronic disease burning in the recesses of their 
bodies. They are quite unconscious of their danger. 
They have not the slightest suspicion of the lurking foe 
which is secretly consuming the very foundations of life. g?fe BATTLE 
) CR-EEK IDEA 
It is only when the house is ruined that this insidious mis- 
chief is made manifest. 
The longer the fire burns unchecked, the greater the 
damage done and the less possible will be complete re- 
storation. If headed off in its early stages, a fire may be 
extinguished with comparative ease, and the work of re- 
pair will have more chance of success. By seeking out and 
removing, so far as possible, all recognizable causes of the 
consuming disease, the process may be finally stopped, and 
further destruction prevented. Then damaged tissues may 
be removed, and sound ones built in their places. Thus 
the sick man may be gradually brought back to a condi- 
tion approaching the normal. Getting well involves recon- 
struction; the building of new organs, of a new body; 
the putting off of the old man of disease, and the putting 
on of the new man of health. 
Rebuilding the Invalid 
Reconstruction is the object at which the Sanitarium 
physician aims. The man who is chronically sick has 
something more than an assortment of bad symptoms. 
His functions are disordered, but back of this there is an 
abnormal, diseased condition of the tissues. There can be 
no chronic disease without deteriorative changes in the 
blood. From diseased blood come diseased tissues and G3fe BATTLE 
CtLEEK IDEA 
disordered actions, so the body itself must be changed. 
Blood, nerves, muscles, glands—all must be renewed and 
rebuilt. 
By means of baths, massage, exercise, and other physio- 
logic measures, the old tissues are broken down and the 
diseased residue carried away. By proper diet, carefully 
selected and adapted to each individual case, especially 
food which is of the most highly nourishing character and 
most easily digestible, and by the employment of all 
rational recuperative means, the building up of the new 
tissue is encouraged. The result is that the patient not 
only feels he is a new man, but actually is a new man. 
He has been given a new lease of life. He has been 
born again. 
Raising a Crop of Health 
An invalid is converted into a healthy man by essen- 
tially the same process as that by which a crop of corn is 
grown. The ground is prepared, the seed is sown, the 
crop is cultivated, and in due time the harvest comes. 
It generally requires three or four months to raise a sub- 
stantial crop of health. Not infrequently wonderful re- 
sults may be obtained in a much shorter time; sometimes 
a longer period is required; but, whether longer or shorter, 
the process is one of seed-sowing and growth, not of luck 
or magic. 6?fe BATTLE- 
CREEK IDEA 
Health is a development, a culture. It is not to be 
found on druggists’ shelves. Health is too vital, too 
energetic and expansive, too strenuous, for any bottle to 
hold it. It is not owned as a monopoly by any locality. 
It cannot be cornered. Health cannot be bought, neither 
can it be obtained by any occult process. 
The chronic invalid must grow out of disease into 
health. “Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also 
reap.” In other words, disease is chiefly the result of 
wrong habits of life. We sow the seeds of disease and 
reap crops of sickness, just as the farmer sows grain and 
reaps a harvest of wheat or corn. 
At Battle Creek the patient is impressed with the fact 
that his treatment necessarily requires, from the very outset, 
the exact regulation of all his habits and the establishment 
of natural conditions of life. The simple life and return 
to nature are ideals constantly held up before him. He 
must work out his own salvation; he must “cease to do 
evil and learn to do well;” he must cease to sow seeds of 
disease, and by every means in his power cultivate health. 
He is thus made to understand that the successful treat- 
ment of his case is as much a matter of careful training 
as is the preparation of a boat crew or a fine trotting horse 
for a race. g>fe BATTLE 
CR-EEK IDEA 
A Highly Developed System of Health Training 
The Battle Creek Sanitarium System is in reality simply 
a finely elaborated system of health training. This of 
course means much more than what is ordinarily known as 
health culture or health training. It involves not only the 
training of the muscles, but the training of the skin, the 
training of the stomach, of every important organ and 
function, out of morbid conditions into healthy ones. 
The patient’s breathing capacity must be increased, his 
feeble heart strengthened, his skin made more active, his 
muscles stronger, his nerve tone higher, his digestion more 
prompt, and his tissue activity greater. He must, in short, 
be made a healthy man. He must be made more vigorous, 
more vital, more resisting to disease, than before he was ill, 
in order to insure him against speedily becoming sick again. 
He must not only be cured, but trained to stay cured. 
Nothing is so vitally important toward this end as the 
Improvement of the quality of the blood. “The blood is 
the life.’’ It is the blood which heals, just as it is the 
blood which builds, vitalizes, and creates within the body. 
Hence we must look for the best curative results to those 
agents which are most capable of improving the quality of 
the blood and controlling its distribution so as to bring the 
healing power of the blood to the part where it is needed. 
The physiologic method is able to accomplish this in CREEK IDEA 
S?fe BATTLE 
cases in which all other methods fail. All that is necessary 
is that the patient shall have a sufficient amount of con- 
stitutional vigor in reserve to react or respond to the treat- 
ment. 
Education for Health and Efficiency 
While the patient’s body is being trained out of disease 
into health, his mind is being educated and his habits re- 
formed so that when once cured he may know how to 
keep himself in good condition and to maintain the 
highest degree of efficiency. 
Why the Sanitarium Succeeds 
The practice of the physiologic method requires, ac- 
cordingly, a thorough knowledge of physiologic processes 
in general, and such an examination of each case as will 
make clear the nature and extent of each departure from 
the normal state; then the specific wants of each are con- 
sidered and met by suitable measures, hydriatic, gym- 
nastic, mechanical or medicinal, where required, and an 
appropriate regulation of the diet and regimen. With such 
precautions and such thoroughness of treatment, the suc- 
cess of the Sanitarium method is not difficult to account for. 
Quite a large proportion of the invalids who visit the 
Sanitarium are of the most chronic and obstinate class. SXe BATTLE 
CELEEK IDEA 
and have previously visited many “springs” and health 
resorts. Almost every change brought temporary relief, 
but the root of the difficulty remains, and can only be 
eradicated by a careful and scientifically directed course of 
health culture, combined with the powerful reconstructive 
measures afforded by scientific hydrotherapy, electricity, 
massage, etc. 
This is precisely the class of patients to whom a sanita- 
rium ought to be best adapted. The temporary relief af- 
forded by palliative means is no longer obtainable. Radi- 
cal measures must be adopted; and for the successful 
employment of such means, a well organized institution, 
with its trained corps of attendants doing team work and 
its systematic regime, is indispensable.