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lEk^lsv THE SANITARIUM. REPRINTED from the Detroit Tribune, 
for June 17,1888. 
The * Sanitarium. 
MICHIGAN’S AID TO THE GOOD HEALTH OE 
THE WORLD. 
A Popular Journalist and Lecturer -Samples the Balm There Is in Battle 
Creek — Review of Ways and Works in the Institution — Prosperity 
of Philanthropy — Free Hospital and Orphans’ Home. 
Battle Creek, June 15. 
I stand upon the promenade roof of a tall building that has captured the tip-top 
of its neighborhood, and take in the outlines of the scene: A city of 15,000 highly 
lespectable people through the valley at the east and south, and elbowing hard for 
new room up the easy hills that give the old town a generous hug on every side ; 
c$wo to six miles away, and every way, with slopes and vales of their own, well- behaved fruit and grain farms that never go “ over the hill to the 
nearer by, at the south, fair Goguac Lake ; in the valley, two streams of grist-mill size 
that jog through town at a tumbling gait and jump into each other’s arms just at 
the west; three streams of travel by rail, crossing each other and running both ways 
at once ; a half-dozen school-houses jostling the houses and suggesting inhabitants of 
civilized habits, with purpose to build the children that way, too ; spires enough to 
imply good moral character here and say amen to every upward purpose ; and a 
family of college buildings across the street, while, serene among the nervous and fussy 
dwellings of the period, some quaint old houses quietly live on into their second halt 
century, leaning upon their massive front pillars like the wrinkled pilgrims of the 
Revolution on their hickory walking sticks. 
Jt?e of a 
and what of it ? Well, in the legendary Indian age, at the meet of the waters men- 
tioned, Wautoga, chief of the Ottawas, whose daughter had eloped with the son of 
Great Elk, chief of the Pottawotamies, told Miss Duskyskin to come back into the 
paternal camp; whereupon she laid her hand within the bridegroom’s and smiled. The wicked Wautoga retorted with his hatchet through her brain. Son-in-law quickly 
gathered the chieftain’s scalp, and a general fight followed. And thereupon the water 
that flows in with Looking-glass water, or Kalamazoo River, was no longer called 
Waupakisco, but, in plain Yankee tongue, Battle Creek. 
And this is where we are—a city of beauty and of business, culture and con- 
science, having voted the saloon a long vacation, and riding four miles of street 
railway. Settlement began 57 years ago, and still there is a corner lot to be had. 
Battle Creek is in Calhoun county, central-southern Michigan, a county gifted with a 
good, natural, open-hearted soil, with 30 respectable lakes and a dozen streams. It 
is 122 miles west from Detroit, 160 east from Chicago, on the Michigan Central, the 
Grand Trunk, and the Cincinnati, Jackson & Mackinaw railways, with but very small 
use for a cemetery, its death-rate being the remarkable one of barely seven for each 
1000 inhabitants annually. Battle Creek is essentially a New England colony. Its 
early settlers came from Massachusetts, Vermont and Maine, with many from New 
York. This accounts for the air of Eastern culture and refinement, combined with 
Western energy and thrift, which even a stranger observes as a characteristic of the 
place, and which renders this beautiful little city one of the most orderly communi- 
ties in Michigan, or any other State, and a most desirable locality for a home. Natural Aduapta^es. 
That is the way the city looks to a man on top of the five-story Medical and 
Surgical Sanitarium. And what is that? Well, it’s the means by which a number 
of generous men and women with money distribute over all this country and some 
of Europe the natural health advantages of this location and the healing advantages 
of the best medical institution money and love of humanity can command. In the 
beginning of things they made a full diagnosis of the whole central belt of the tem- 
perate zone, found this central, locally correct, and so sheltered by the great woods 
of Michigan and so tempered by the great waters round about the State as to secure 
the most even temperature allowed within the mid-western States. The rolling sur- 
face, the forests and the lakes graduate the summer of Michigan 'into its winter and 
its winter into its summer, keeping out the severely sudden shifts of heat and cold — 
the hot blasts and the blizzards of the prairie states — and creating it the fruit state 
of the North. In Michigan, sober folk neither freeze to death nor die of sunstroke — 
beyond the exceptions that mark the rule a truth. Why, Battle Creek is 500 feet 
above the sea — 300 higher than Chicago — and the basement of the Sanitarium is 66 
Jfeet above the rivers that drain the region. 5ummer Breezes. 
The highest climb mercury made here last dog days was 96° F., and seldom 
touched 90, while Chicago commenced on the second hundred, and the temperature 
reached 104° F. on the hottest days. At Mackinac and Marquette the thermometer 
stood above a hundred in the shade. The thermometer in this breezy place rarely 
reaches 90°. 
As in other parts of Central Michigan, the winters are likewise milder than in 
adjacent states, being tempered by the surrounding waters of the great lakes. The 
winter blizzards sometimes advertised by the weather clerk to reach this protected 
region from the Northwest always break their backbones on Lake Michigan, and do 
not arrive at all, or in so dilapidated a condition as to be unrecognizable. 
Battle Creek is not Florida, Colorado or California, but their mean, which seems 
to have in it the gold of good health for the poor health that can find it anywhere ; 
and “the artificial climate” conjured at will within the generous walls calls to mind 
either the states by the sea or under Pike’s Peak. f\ <?l?e/nis(:’5 Opipiop of tl?e U/ater Supply. 
The City of Battle Creek has an excellent water supply, but the Sanitarium has 
its own private supply of water, which Prof. A. B. Prescott, chemist at the State Uni- 
versity, after having twice analyzed it, says : ‘ ‘ This water must be classed with those 
of extraordinary purity,” and he’s a man acquainted with water in its natural state. 
The water is soft, and has its head in the sandstone rock at the bottom of the giant 
wells 2000 feet away. 
fli) tlpe fT]ediqal Juperiptepdept. 
Well, having looked over the situation and the philanthropy thus far, and noted 
the general satisfaction among the patients, I said : ‘ ‘ Altogether, natural and artifi- 
cial, it’s a pretty good thing, I guess.” So, being in town for a pair of popular lec- 
tures, with ‘ ‘ a day off,” I climbed the hill with a street car on purpose to look some 
more into the winding up of run-down humanity, and to get at the bottom I began 
at the top, by interviewing the Medical Superintendent, J. H. Kellogg, M. D. 
To say that the doctor is an easy man to interview would be a distortion of 
&Sts. He spends eight to twelve hours daily in the examination and treatment of pa- V! 
tients, operations, etc., but seems to have a sort of aversion to newspaper men. I lay 
ambush half a day before I was able to catch him long enough to put a few ques- 
tions at him, and then he seemed so impatient to get away that he could n’t keep 
still, but circled around the room with an occasional half-moment forgotten in an easy 
chair, as he answered my questions. 
‘‘The origin of the Sanitarium, Dr. Kellogg, what was it?” I asked. 
‘‘The original,” said he, ‘‘was a small affair opened in 1866 on the water-cure 
plan, the thought of the founders being to treat the sick chiefly with water and a 
regulated diet.” 
‘‘Was their purpose money or public benefit?” 
‘ ‘ It certainly was not money ; for while it was regularly incorporated and the 
money furnished by several hundred stockholders in shares of $25 each, each certifi- 
cate of stock contains the proviso that the holder never should receive any divi- 
dends, but that all profits should go for improvement in facilities and for the care of 
the sick poor. This provision continues until this day. The real purpose or hope of 
the enterprise was to promote sanitary reforms in all directions. It was, you know, 
,about the time that this Institution was launched that the advocates of oatmeal, gra- 
7' 
4\am flour, cracked wheat, and other cereal preparations first came to the front ; and 
©rivi-CV that agitation had something to do with the origin of this Institution, as at that time' 
there was much popular opposition to these excellent and now universally used foods.” 
“And how long did water cure?” 
“ Well,” said the doctor, “after about ten years in which the Institution enjoyed 
some repute as a water-cure, its prosperity began to wane, and the managers became 
convinced that a change was necessary. At their request, I came to the Institution 
as superintendent and physician-in-chief, much against my personal feelings, as I was 
interested in other lines of medical and scientific work. I consented to come only 
under the conditions that I should be allowed to enlarge the scope of the Institution 
and place it upon a broader and rational basis.” 
f\ J-lealttyy (jrou/tl?. 
‘‘Will you give me some idea of the growth of the Institution?” 
“Twelve years ago the Institution consisted of the small wooden main building 
and four or five cottages tenanted by some thirty-five people in quest of new stomachs, 
livers, brains, etc., and about twenty-five doctors and employes. By the following spring 
our little buildings had overflowed, and we were renting neighborhood rooms, and it 
v-ct became evident that larger accommodations must be afforded. We had no money, 
but our credit was good, and in the course of the next year we erected the larger 
portion of our present main building at a cost o.f a little more than one hundred 
thousand dollars, all of which was borrowed. Our increase in patients was so rapid 
that when the building was completed in the early spring of 1878 every floor was 
occupied, and at no time since have we had any surplus room. 
“Four years ago, we found that our rent bill for outside rooms was about fifteen 
hundred dollars annually, and we added the new five-story brick addition to the main 
building at a cost of $60,000 and yet are now again paying $1200 a year for outside 
rooms, and for several summers we have had to pitch tents for the lodgment of a 
portion of our help.” 
5'Z(? °f tye Ipstitutiop. 
“What is the present capacity of the Sanitarium?” 
“With the added room of the 15 cottages we at present occupy,” he replied, 
‘ ‘ we can accommodate about four hundred people.” 
“How many helpers do 300 patients keep busy?” ‘‘About two hundred. We have 197 to-day, including physicians, nurses, and bafa> 
attendants, numbering more than one hundred in the medical corps.” 
‘‘For what purpose is the large building in course of erection just north of the 
present main building ? ” I asked. 
‘‘A free hospital,” said he, ‘‘which will contain 175 beds.” 
“Well, well,” I thought, ‘‘so the poor are to have the gospel practiced unto 
them ! ” 
‘‘Our charity work,” the Doctor continued, ‘‘of late has amounted to $10,000 to 
$12,000 a year, but we have not had room to be as charitable as we mean to be 
with increased facilities. At present we are treating twenty-five persons for partial pay 
or none at all, and have averaged that number of charity patients through the past 
year. The Institution is not fully out of debt, but nearly so, and we are putting up 
this building so as to be able to greatly enlarge our charity work and to enable us 
to treat a much larger number with the same expenditure. Our surgical work has 
greatly outgrown our present quarters, and the new building, which will be chiefly 
devoted to patients of this class, will be partly devoted to paying patients of the 
surgical class. f\ to tf?e poor. 
The plan is to admit into the new hospital only people who have really serious 
diseases which cannot be satisfactorily treated at home. Applicants for beds will 
have to be introduced by reliable persons and guaranteed to be indigent and worthy 
objects of charity ; no others v ill be received. The medical service will be gratui- 
tous. As fast as patients become convalescent, yet not in condition to leave, they 
will be set to doing what they can to care for themselves, then to aid in caring for 
others. It will be largely for the benefit of surgical patients, and they will be given 
all the medical attention and sanitarium advantages that the most wealthy patient 
can get here. Persons who can pay something for board, even a dollar a week, will 
be expected to do so. 
‘ ‘ The original capital stock of the Sanitarium was less than forty thousand dol- 
lars, yet we have expended in gratuitous treatment more than double that sum, most 
of it within the last ten years.” 
‘‘What will be the cost of the free hospital?” 
‘‘From thirty to forty thousand dollars.” 
'How is this money to be raised?” ‘ ‘ Some of us have put our hands into our pockets and made a liberal donatidti( 
to start the enterprise, and provision has been made for the payment of the rest 
when the building is completed. The Sanitarium corporation will bear the expense 
of caring for the patients.” 
‘ ‘And what is the present investment in the entire equipment of the Institution ?” 
‘ ‘ Something more than three hundred and fifty thousand dollars.” 
‘ ‘ How many people all told have been treated here ? ” 
‘ ‘ Upward of twenty thousand.” 
‘ ‘ And what has been the death-rate ? ” 
‘ * It has averaged below three per year. Of the last 600 important surgical cases, 
or«1y six have died. This is attributable not merely to good surgery, but to the aseptic 
conditions secured, and to the superior sanitary conditions with which our hospital wards 
and the skill of our nurses surround the patient after the operation. A stupid, un- 
trained nurse, a bad diet, and an ill-ventilated surgical ward, will make havoc with 
the cases of the most skillful surgeon.’'  <$a$<^s. 
“You reject some applicants for treatment?” I inquired. 
“Yes, we always reject incurables and those afflicted with contagious diseases, 
and patients likely to be dangerous or offensive to others.” 
‘ Do you admit consumptives ? ” 
“Yes, if there is hope for them ; if not, we tell them so and let them go. But 
consumption is not, as commonly supposed, contagious through the breath or the 
touch, only through the sputa. 
par/n. 
‘ ‘ The Sanitarium does its own farming ? ” 
‘‘Some of it,” replied the Doctor. ‘‘A mile north-east, in sight from our upper• 
stories, is located our farm of 160 acres, where we have a dairy of thirty fine cows, 
and rear between three thousand and four thousand chickens each year, with ducks 
and turkeys in proportion. We grow from one thousand to twelve hundred bushels 
strawberries, raspberries, etc., every year.” ‘ ‘ Do thirty cows cream the Sanitarium ? ” 
‘ ‘ No ; we use five or six barrels of milk every day, but the additional supply is 
obtained from dairies kept by farmers for our benefit, and which are under our 
supervision.” 
‘ ‘ And do the chickens partake of a more sanitary diet than the average barn- 
yard fowl ? ” 
‘‘Yes, sir; barn-yard is a foreign country to them. We feed them the same kind 
and quality of food we give our patients. That is, the bushels of broken food—bread, 
meat, potatoes, and what not—go straight to the dining-room of the fowls.” 
“And that’s why I missed that old acquaintance, the travelling man’s tavern 
hash, at your breakfast table, doubtless ? ” 
“Certainly; you never will find ‘hash’ on our bill of fare. 
Staff. 
“How many physicians are on the medical staff of the Sanitarium?” 
“We are eight, three ladies and five gentlemen. My associates are all educated 
in the best regular schools of medicine. They are, Drs. Kate Lindsay, Anna H. Stewart, O. G. Place, W. H. Riley, H. M. Dunlap, George A. Hare, and Jessie D. HangKj 
‘ ‘ Myself and my associates believe in and practice rational medicine, which rec- 
ognizes no universal principle of cure, but makes use of every remedy which science 
brings to light and experience proves to be of service in the relief of human suffer- 
ing or the cure of disease. Our aim has been to make this Institution represent in 
the most complete form the most advanced type of rational medicine. This Institu- 
tion is by no means a Water Cure. We do not discard medicinal remedies, but use 
any remedy of known scientific value. But of course most of our health-seekers need, 
not medication in large doses, but the diet, treatment, exercise, etc., indispensable to 
weak stomachs, livers, nerves, and bad habits. They need to be told when it’s bed- 
time, to come in when it rains, that it is as wicked and disgraceful to hang one’s self 
by corset strings as by a halter, etc.” 
‘‘What is your Training School I hear mentioned?” 
‘ ‘ Well,” said Dr. Kellogg, “ from the beginning we felt the need of nurses who 
were intelligent and educated in completing the work of the physician, by carrying 
out instructions and doing many things which he cannot do ; and finding it impos- 
sible to get nurses trained to our liking, we some years ago opened our  Befool for fJurs^s. 
To-day we couldn’t keep house without this school. Its benefits, too, are wide, as 
one course requires two years of hard study, and is much more comprehensive than 
that of other training schools. We send our nurses over all the United States, and 
have students in our school from Switzerland and other foreign countries. In this 
school all our bath attendants, and those who administer massage and other forms 
of treatment, are thoroughly trained. There are now sixty young men and women in 
the Training School, pursuing a two years’ course, using text-books in anatomy and 
physiology, attending lectures and recitations four times a week, and between times 
having the leading features of the work experimentally illustrated. Every possible 
method of using water and electricity is taught, the science of massage, and suitable 
exercises for the various kinds and grades of invalids, preparation of food for the 
sick—everything that will tend to transform misery into comfort, despair into hope, 
and sickness into health. Why, our students get thrice the instruction they could 
in the ordinary hospital, a sanitarium being really the only satisfactory place to carry 
on a school for nurses.” 
‘ ‘ And what next ? ” * ‘ Something that shall make our sanitary influence felt in many private horned 
even more than now. We have recently opened the 
Softool of 
All of our domestic helpers are trained in this school. The world needs sanitary 
housekeepers, and is willing to pay for them. This new school in a six-months’ 
course does what is possible to meet that demand. 
“During the first month students in this school are given their board and 
tuition for their work, and paid wages later, as their proficiency warrants. They are 
taught the quickest, cleanest, and most wholesome methods of caring for a private 
house from cellar to garret, with the purpose of keeping the family eating, sleeping 
and working under conditions that will let them do so a long time. That is, we 
teach them kitchen and dining-room service, parlor and chamber work ; not much 
fancy cake baking, but scientific and healthful cookery of all sorts, plain and fine 
sewing, plain and fine laundry work, how to select, preserve and prepare healthful 
and economical dietaries and bills of fare, to detect bad water, bogus milk, other 
Yshams in food and poisonous wall paper ; how to ventilate—not a scandal, but a house, as also how to select carpets for best effect and longest wear, etc.” 
At this point an urgent call from some bedside drew the Doctor away ; but I 
may say that this new school for both servants and wives will be conducted by Mrs. 
Dr. Kellogg, who has for several years operated an experimental kitchen, Mrs. Hall, 
(the matron), and other teachers. 
U/f?at Eat. 
Well, the medical superintendent having given me so good an impression of the 
Sanitarium, I concluded to sample it a little further by staying at dinner, and be- 
low is the bill of fare, printed on tinted card-board, in buff-colored ink, and at the 
Sanitarium’s own printing-office :— SOUP. 
Tomato Soup. Green Corn Soup 
MEATS. 
Beefsteak. Roast Chicken. 
VEGETABLES. 
Mashed Potatoes. Stewed Cabbage. 
Green Corn. 
BREADS. 
Patent Flour Bread. Bran Bread. Graham Bread. 
Plain Oatmeal Crackers. Graham Crackers. 
Fatent Flour Crackers. Oatmeal Biscuit. Dyspeptic Wafers. Granola. 
Wheatena. Cream Toast. Zwieback. 
SAUCES. 
Pears. Stewed Prunes. Strawberries. 
BEVERAGES. 
Sanitarium Coffee. Milk. 
GRAINS. 
Cracked Wheat, with Fruit. Graham Grits. 
DESSERT. 
Apple Tart. Apples. I worked over it for an hour, and arose bewailing nothing but the incapacity or 
the human stomach, and scores of others seemed to be of my mind. At breakfast, 
without a menu, I was offered the like full assortment of breads, besides warm gems 
and rolls, the same beverages, oatmeal, and that queen of the mush family—graham 
grits, a tumbler of cream all to myself, unlimited sweet apples baked without a 
worm, green apples, eggs of good character, tenderloin steak, baked potatoes, et 
cetera. Then a friend who was trying to gain a pound a day loaned me the dinner 
bills for a week back, and I note some of the variations: In soups, bean, macaroni, 
green corn, beef, rice and vermicelli ; in meats, roast beef, mutton, fish and stewed 
chicken ; in vegetables, sweet potatoes, peas, squash, baked beans, lima beans and 
sweet corn ; in sauces, apples, peaches, cranberries, blackberries, apricots and blue- 
berries ; in grains, hominy, rice, pearl barley and gluten ; and in dessert, lemon, 
breadfruit and chocolate puddings, besides raisins, nuts, bananas and oranges. 
‘ ‘ Well, well,” I said, “ the believers in the starvation cure have to go elsewhere 
to find their remedy.” The orthodox tea and coffee, too, are served when called for 
in cases in which they are not forbidden by the doctors. But the most approved 
drink here is hot water, which is served through the halls to all who present their 
little pitchers an hour before each meal, and again about six P. M., and the advice is to moisten yourself with four or five glasses a day, then omit all drink at mealsS 
By the way, it’s a two-meals-a-day institution—breakfast at 7 : 30, dinner at 1 130— 
though if the old habit won’t give way, one may have an evening lunch sent to his 
room ; but it is now bedtime, and dinner promises to put off appetite till breakfast 
bells. 
Eat. 
When appetite has been smothered with a “ square meal,” the man at the table 
looks up. I found myself dining in a hall of very tasteful and elaborate finish ; table 
room for 300 or more ; three sides full of broad windows, the floor waxed ; two 
breadths of velvet carpet down the long center aisle ; the fresco and the woodwork 
pleasing to the eye ; a banana tree and two or three palms in a wide alcove at the 
far end—a little patch from the tropics—and fine pot plants in full bloom, from the 
green-house, flanking the entrance ; huge mirrors, reminding the eater of his daily 
gains, and reflecting tables surrounded with easy chairs, and tables laid with the 
whitest of the loom ; handsome glass and china, and cutlery that never dug turnips, 
while the tables are served by pleasant-faced and obliging young women in neat 
vfalue dresses of simple pattern. The quiet serving of the guests by the waiters min- isters also to appetite—no rush, scold, bang, clatter, or loaded tray, bottom up, on 
the floor. The dining-room style is in such good breeding that even the crude 
among the invalids catch the spirit. Inquiry shows that the “waiter girls” are stu- 
dents in the Training School, and no “tips” allowed. 
Again, feeling a sort of health-lift satisfaction with inspection thus far “ on our 
own hook,” I kept on “ taking in ” the building and the grounds. Passing out by 
the light and roomy business office, I felt a curiosity to know who held office at the 
top of so unique a resting place for the tired out. Treasurer Murphy satisfied me 
with this list of directors: J. Fargo, I. D. Van Horn, G. H. Murphy, L. M. Hall, 
A. R. Henry, W. H. Hall, J. H. Kellogg ; and the executive officers : J. H. Kellogg, 
president, J. Fargo, vice-president, G. H. Murphy, treasurer, W. H. Hall, secretary 
and steward, Mrs. L. M. Hall, matron, Rev. L. McCoy, Chaplain. 
Step5 apd Ip5id<^. 
Getting out, I found the grounds of the Medical and Surgical Sanitarium to con- 
sist of seven acres, with a turtle-back slope, and a creek across the barn corner at 
>|be rear. Round about is a village of two-story sanitary cottages, fountains, green- houses, summer-houses, trees, flower beds, lawns, a deer park, with a fine deer froth 
the Indian Territory, containing also a tame bear, monkeys, squirrels, and marmosets, 
paved walks, electric light, and no fences. And huge on the crest at the front stands 
the main building. It is of brick and five stories above the basement, has a total 
frontage of 416 feet, and the width is 54 feet, with architectural variations and loom- 
ing skyward 84 feet from corner stone to promenade. 
Now this little structure affords not coops, but high, roomy rooms for 250 peo- 
ple. The cottages can rock to sleep 150 more, and the rising Free Hospital will rest 
affliction “on flowery beds of ease” for another 200. 
Come in out of the cold! It might be four below out there; in here, Florida in 
February. Steam turned off in half the rooms, and ventilating shafts always open, 
yet the thermometers in halls and private rooms registering from 66 to 72, and the 
air so pure I thought nothing about it but to take in all that got in my way. I 
found the floor space to exceed two acres, yet the first floor only just large enough 
for parlor and reception rooms, business office, medical offices, spacious hall-ways and 
waiting rooms, post-office, gentlemen’s treatment rooms, dining hall and gymnasium, 
laboratory, rooms for mending throats and lungs, the electrical rooms, where light- 
ning strikes to order, eye and ear department, and the et cetera of closet and pas- sage way. All other floors are chiefly private rooms, opening off halls three paces 
wide and reached by two broad flights of stairs and an elevator that lifts a dozen 
on foot and a pair of invalids in wheel chairs. 
There’s a veranda almost around the lower three stories, 200 feet of the second 
one cased in with glass as a sun parlor and tramp ground in winter, and little bal- 
conies higher up. In fact, there’s half a mile of promenade through halls and veran- 
das, a second and third sun parlor aloft on the south, and up in the hall of the fifth, 
I stepped out on to the roof. There are two water closets on each floor, hot and 
cold water, hose pipes, Babcock extinguishers, and outside fire escapes. But it would 
take an expert to fire the building, since a watchman walks the halls once an hour 
all night, and neither match, gas, lamp, nor stove, except the cooking ranges in the 
tiled kitchen and the fires in the remote brick engine room are permitted, every 
spot being heated with steam and lighted with the Edison electric lighting system. 
Many of the rooms have grates, but guests seldom use them, being satisfied with the 
perfect ventilation which supplies a soft, steam-heated air in great abundance. 
Among the extras on the second floor are the ladies’ bath and treatment rooms, 
and a large conservatory, growing figs, bananas, rubber, the cactus, and other tropi- 
cal odds. The third floor parlor is a sort of “ rogue’s gallery,” in which many patients have 
left behind the photographs taken in the “ before-and-after-taking ” style. For in- 
stance, there hang the two faces of a man who came a dyspeptic skeleton of 97 
pounds and went away with 176 muscular pounds. Close by are two photographs 
bearing the same name, but which bear no resemblance to each other. One is a 
down-in-the-mouth, lean and despairing face ; the other, plump, rosy cheeks and 
lips, sparkling eyes, a face “ pretty as a picture ” and happy as a cherub. 
(Juest'5 Apartmer^. 
A walk through the halls and a score of rooms shows that the Sanitarium is 
furnished for health and comfort, not for questionable luxury ; for patients who can 
pay an average of $2.00 a day for board and room and constant medical attendance. 
For instance, in the parlor are a score of large arm-rockers, cane seated, the seating 
of most of the chairs, and every room contains two rockers. Last night I slept in 
an average fourth-floor room, on a spring bed that made me at home till 6 o’clock, 
between clean sheets. The wood-work of the room is the varnished pine, and there 
Siare a wardrobe of the same, a tasteful bedstead, dresser, commode, and table, two rockers, and a chair on legs. The central half of the floor is covered with a brusT 
sels carpet, in one piece, the border the health device of hard pine, varnished and 
laid around the room with walnut checks at the corners. Then there are a steam 
coil, a mantel and Edison burner; and the bill is at the transient-guest rate of 
$1.00 a day for room and food. Daily medical inspection and treatment would sim- 
ply double the terms, making $14.00 a week. Still, on the second floor, I looked 
into some elegantly marbled and decorated suites you may pay $25.60 a week for, if 
you like, and swell the charity fund. 
tyouy tf?e Br^attyes. 
I dropped into a small basement room, and was struck by a blizzard of Dakota 
power. It came through a five-feet hole in the outer stone wall, in which a huge 
fan was whirling. On the outside was a brick tunnel one might walk through. It 
ended 70 feet away under a rustic summer house, whose center was a vertical cold- 
air shaft about seven feet square and fifteen feet high, in which, I was told, the 
summer air was cooled by evaporation from 1200 feet of muslin kept constantly 
et- In the small basement room mentioned, the first thing that torrent of cold 
struck, besides the investigator, was 1200 square feet of steam heating coils over- 
head. In the room below was Minnesota in a blizzard. Opening a door into a lit- 
tle room whose sides gaped with the mouths of channels to different parts—the re- 
ceiving room of the air as it left the coiled pipes — I had a breath of Florida, and 
the fresh air swept swiftly up the flues to enter even the remotest room as pure as 
outdoors and right against the steam-coil of that room, to be warmed over, if not 
warm enough. I tested the current at the inlet into my room, and it blew scraps 
of paper along the floor, while through the ventilating outlet in the opposite base- 
board scraps went skyward. Toward the farther end of the basement I found 
another little room and the fan and stream of cold air against 1200 square feet of 
hot pipe repeated, the two streams pouring in pure air at the rate of twenty-five 
barrels per minute for each patient. 
All kitchen steams shoot up a funnel-duct over the cooking ranges in the base- 
ment ; the outward drafts of the dining-hall were near the floor ; those of the serv- 
ing room or assistant kitchen at the side were near the ceiling, so that the current 
through the doors was always from the guests, and no smell of kitchen is ever dis- 
cern ible in dining-room or any other portion of the house. Even the general first- floor water closet, with a current along the under side of every seat, a flue above 
and below each urinal and a layer of charcoal under it, changed every night, had 
no trace of bad breath. 
So I voted the fresh-air system of the Sanitarium perfection ; and its stale-air 
elimination I voted ditto. 
pire, ar)d Drair^e. 
I looked with great respect upon the row of furnaces eating ten tons of coal 
yesterday, and the row of boilers with such devices as gave a moist Southern at- 
mosphere at will to one room, and to another a cool, dry Northern air ; and then 
the Edison dynamos and apparatus in a side room supplying the sanitary colony 
with 500 incandescent burners at a cost but little exceeding the oil that lubricates 
the machinery—$400 a year and four times the light, instead of $2500 for gas. This 
impressed me as an improvement. 
I applied the nasal test to the kitchen sinks and other outlets for refuse, and 
no tainted whiff; all outpourings ran away to the river, and flues from the sew. ers to the great smoke-stack sucked all gases and odors up chimney; the system 
was cleanliness and life insurance. 
Neither did the kitchen, with its adjacent helpers’ dining-room, make a man 
loathe his victuals; the milk-room, with its large coolers full of the fluid in cans 
packed in ice, did n’t > curdle the glass of cream that had entered into my breakfast. 
The bakery, with two men loading and unloading the revolving oven, told that the 
dozen varieties of bread food on the table were the work of “ our special artist on 
the spot.” In the packing room, girls were putting up supplies of these foods for 
shipment. The supply store wore the air of the grocery that works to please and 
lives by it, while the Sanitarium printing-office was a “daisy” in the eye of a 
newspaper man, with its eight or ten hands turning out the sanitary blanks, depart- 
ment reports, letter heads, daily programmes, the shipping labels, the colored wrap- 
pers for “ health foods,” etc. 
5f?e for M/or\[. 
On the retired portion of the third floor I got into the serious field of knife, 
needle, bandage, and the nursing of the maimed and disabled up into a desirable life. Its operating room and the sixteen wards for surgical patients are removed 
from the main hall by three doors and two passage-ways, and the cleanliness of all 
kinds seemed to have conscience in it. The floor and side walls waist high were 
covered with heavy manilla paper in long, wide strips, glued down, painted three coats 
and varnished—not a cranny for germ or vermin, while ventilation, with a smoke- 
stack draft, kept the air as fresh as a breath from the prairie, yet warm—12,000 feet 
of it per hour for every patient. Being only a layman, I might mistake on technical 
points, but my nose is a professional ; yet it and I stepped in where lay a man 
whose back the day before had been cut open, one kidney lanced, two quarts of pus 
extracted, more constantly oozing onto cotton, and the urine all passed that way, 
and still there was no trace of taint in the atmosphere. 
The hospital kitchen was neat as any mother can keep hers ; intelligent nurses 
in white caps glided in and out. Beside each bed hung a tablet of ward blanks 
headed “ Daily Report of Nurse.” This records the patient’s sleep in time and char- 
acter, respiration, pulse, temperature, food, medicine, pain, state of mind, of nerves, 
of wound, and whatever else can help the physician to see the case as well as 
though constantly in the room. In the operating room stood a broad easeful of very impressive-looking 
ments resting on velvet, a high, narrow table with leather cushion and large leather 
castors that wheel the patient tenderly to the bedside, and no carpet or needless 
furniture. A tablet of blanks for cases lay on a side table ready for use, giving date 
of operation ; the name, age, address and nationality of the patient; names of sur- 
geon and assistants or others present; history, diagnosis, and preparatory treatment 
of the trouble; the anaesthetic used, moment of its application, and time and de- 
scription of the operation, etc. 
So, when to the air, and the trained nursing, and the exact diet, I added skill 
in operating, I did not wonder that surgical operations here were a success, when- 
ever success is possible. And then when I learned that some of the most difficult 
and long nursed had been administered unto the poor without pay, I said, with the 
colored pastor in Richmond: “The sun do move”—humanity grows warm with 
kindness. Close by were rooms for persons with lung ailments, in which the air was 
medicated by various ingenious means, giving to one patient an antiseptic air, fra- 
grant with odors that germs cannot live in, while in another the patient inhaled the 
perfume of a pine forest, and found the balsamic ozonized atmosphere a healing balm 
ITp his asthmatic lungs. 
Sv-'C' f\ fleu; patient. 
I followed a new-comer, saw him as Adam in Eden, saw him tested by highest 
medical knowledge and contrivances for weak spots, from his corns to his bald head, 
then inquired of for all that he hated in himself and his grandfather ; and saw the 
points put to paper. I tagged him into the labyrinth of rooms where ten trained and 
muscular young men in tropical scarcity of clothing were putting twenty men and 
boys someway “ out of joint ” through every known healing form of bath, from 
Turkey to Battle Creek; and in adjoining rooms clean men were laid out in the 
hands of the massage artists, being lubricated and kneaded and limbered from top 
to toe. 
And there were rooms and appliances for ten more, the full thirty being worked 
at, wet and dry, a full hour each; that is, the force could treat more than a hundred 
men in a day, while the ladies’ treatment rooms were one-third larger, with twenty- 
five strong, rosy-cheeked attendants—the two sets able to renovate several hundred 
in a day. 
Then what? Well, my friend got out with a new glow on his face and a new 
Spring in his shoe. In the chemical laboratory, the doings of his kidneys were qual- itatively and quantitatively analyzed, as the truest test of what his whole system was 
doing. And in the office of the medical clerk I saw where that analysis was recorded 
in a great book, even to quantity, color, odor, reaction, specific gravity, and amount 
of urea, as also everything hostile to nature there. And in another big book I saw 
the register of his weight, height, strength, lung measurements, respirations, the pulse, 
action of the heart, and a lot more. So I thought the doctors had found what was 
in him and what ought to be. On a long diet list the doctors marked 
tye Better £at, 
on another paper they marked how much he better play with things in the gym- 
nasium, and on still another they told how much he better let the Swedish move- 
ments play upon him. It looked as though doctors were human ; they believed in 
exercise by other people. 
I got a look through the row of private offices, with their cases of unthinkable 
inventions for cheating nature of a needless hair on a lady’s face, removing the ab- 
normal growths with electric needles and the like ; but the personal confidences of 
rooms are of course locked in the breast of the physician, and the key thrown in the well. Had I friends there, I should thank my stars the doctors are men antF 
women of conscience. But through an evening hour in the semi-private place of 
minor facial treatments, I saw eyelids turned wrong side out and something done for 
’em, the ears of the deaf unstopped, the nasal polypus ensnared, the crook taken out 
of a nose, the abnormal tonsils plucked from bub’s throat before he had time to shut 
his teeth, and the red-hot electric needle touched to the angry spots at the back of 
a throat—thirty made happy in an hour. 
And while I looked on, in came a page with the half-daily report bearing the 
temperatures of a score of patients in the surgical ward, four of whom the surgeon 
had seriously dealt with that afternoon. It stood below ioo° F. in all, and the doc- 
tor smiled as he tweaked the next nose. 
fteross tfye flail. 
Here I fell in with two full laboratories, chemical and biological, a suite of rooms 
and side rooms ample for the skillful treatment of throats and lungs whose owners 
had ill-treated them. The physician in charge of the many odd contrivances offered 
put me into the pneumatic cabinet, pump out the air, and make the air rush into my lungs, or to work my breathing bellows for me for a quarter of an hour, to letv 
me inhale or exhale into compressed air; to inhale or exhale into rarefied air ; to 
inhale oxonized air or pure oxygen, or give me the air bath, air douche, or even an 
oxygen enemata — a short cut to the liver. Undoubtedly I looked dazed and reckoned 
real science could beat the doctor with a duck of a name. 
In adjacent rooms — the electrical department — I struck lightning in all sorts and 
sizes of currents for nerves not on their good behavior, and another physician to 
handle the jumping factor in vitality. I had an electrical wind blow on me, and saw’ 
the doctor sparking a lady patient after the most approved scientific method. A min- 
ister, a small boy, and an old maid, sitting on stools on a glass-legged platform, were 
so astonished that their hair stood on end. 
/radical /T)aef?ii}ery. 
I stumbled into a noisy room about fifty feet on the square. It proved to be the 
hall of Swedish movements. There, run by a steam shaft coming in somewhere, 
were twenty-five or thirty strong machines, jiggling and sliding and rolling, that ex- 
ercised a man while he did nothing but sit, lie or stand still. He took hold of one, and it shook his hands as though he had a double dose of palsy. He sat in an 
chair, and vibrated through every muscle. He lay flat and face downward upon a cush- 
ioned plank, and while it slid slowly back and forth six or eight inches, through a central 
opening gently worked a half-dozen leather fists kneading the stomach and bowels, 
thus knocking dyspepsia out of time. Another two-fisted thing paddled sleepy kid- 
neys that way; others shook and rubbed legs and feet; others gave electric-like 
vibrations to sides and back. Some more slapped him well with wide straps, and all 
along the line, recalling the memory of his mother’s slipper. A new set, with a bunch 
of padded fingers, thumped him wherever circulation was slow, and a swift-whirling, 
corrugated wooden drum put frictional electricity into his feet till each particular hair 
stood on end. No man got out with a poor pulse. The spot seemed the Paradise 
of weakness and laziness. On inquiry I learned that this room contained the best 
Swedish movement machinery made in this country or Europe, and that fully half of 
the apparatus had been devised by the Superintendent especially for this Institution. 
In another room a muscular Scotchman put the victim through five hundred 
hand-movements that made him also exert his own muscle. Here paralytics had their 
dead limbs resurrected, and rheumatics their stiff joints limbered up by skillful manip- 
ulations.  Jfyeir passage. 
I looked into the Gymnasium, a choice hall, some 50x85 feet on the floor, ceiling 
high, windows on three sides and ventilators thick. And these are some of the helps 
to muscle I noted around the sides : Rowing machines, chest weights, chest expand- 
ers, the quarter circle, eccentric, machines for strengthening the back, neck, shoulder, 
wrist and fingers, horizontal, vertical and traveling bars, swinging rings, inclined 
plane, leg machines, etc., with long rows of dumb-bells and Indian clubs, which are 
manipulated by classes, to piano music, at stated hours of the day, with one of the 
physicians on the rostrum as leader. Patients are told here that idleness is the bane 
of health, and that if they want to get well quick and to stay, they must work their 
passage with the dumb-bells and Indian clubs, and other playthings in the gymnasium. 
And the man of a month in the harness seemed to swing fifteen pounds easier than 
.the fresh hand did six, which seemed proof that the theory was good in practice. Joeial ar)d £al^. 
The social life of the Institution is a contribution to right living and healthful 
good nature ; daily morning worship in the parlors, but attendance voluntary ; a short 
sermon Sunday afternoon ; a literary society conducted by the patients every Satur- 
day evening ; a library of good reading and plenty of sociability amid the exercises 
in the gymnasium, at meal times and while waiting for turn at the medical offices. 
There may be individual ‘ ‘ blues,” but the general life among the patients is cheerful 
and anti-blue. 
Outdoor walks are encouraged ; also summer picnics to Goguac Lake, a two-and- 
a-half mile basin of clear water, a mile and a half to the south, whence, by stand-pipe 
system this city gets its water. And, by the way, the Sanitarium holds a long-time 
lease of the most romantic east bank and high bluff of the lake, where it will this 
season erect a summer boarding-house and pavilion, and probably launch a steamer 
of its own. There are already several fine steamers upon the lake, some of which 
make regular trips down the lake and back during the summer months, while others 
may be chartered for special excursions at very reasonable rates. This is a most de- 
Jightful spot in June, July, and August, and is much frequented for camping, fishing, swimming, etc., if not flirting. A number of wharves and boat-houses supply sanj£ 
boats and a variety of row-boats in abundance. Its shores sport a pleasant settle- 
ment, with summer hotels, parks, drives, and all other attractions that gather the 
dwellers for pleasure from near and away off in heated times. 
ytye <$f?aQc;e. 
If I were coming here to get rid of poor health, I’d bring the little folks along, 
to give them a good start in good health, mental as well as physical. Under the 
conduct of kind and experienced teachers, and in a pleasant place, there is a kinder- 
garten, which I visited, and saw more than forty little folks from three to eight 
years old, in their sports, marching to music, tinkering at tea-kettles in clay, weav- 
ing mats, busily enjoying many industrial amusements, and easily learning much 
from the many object lessons they thought fun. 
In another cottage is the nursery, where patients’ children are tenderly cared for 
twenty-four hours a day, if desired, to the relief of invalid mothers who want Dotty 
Dimple to be near them, but cannot endure the care of her much of the time. And in 
nursery and kindergarten the expense was a trifle. It struck me that the lambs of the Sanitarium flock were cropping a pasture that 
would incline them unto virtue and vitality all along the way up to three-score and 
ten. Let Jimmy and Jennie have a taste in that pasture, and keep mother contented 
under treatment. 
And while I wondered what more could be done for the beginners of now-a-days, 
I learned that a Sanitarium 
Orpl?ai/5 l?o(T\<? 
had already a group of five, and that it was expected to increase the number to 
twenty-five the coming summer, and later to fifty. Unprotected orphan children from 
three to five years old are taken, fed, clothed, and educated in the kindergarten, in 
school, and the knowledge of hygiene. This enterprise is one for which Dr. Kellogg 
is individually responsible. It is a hobby of his that if children are properly fed, 
clothed, and educated from infancy, they won’t take so naturally to deviltry as a 
great share of the young folks do now-a-days. So it is his purpose to rear half a 
hundred little folks to young manhood and womanhood, giving them the best pos- 
sible conditions for physical, mental and moral development. Especial attention is given to physical culture. The little dots are daily put through a system of exer4 
cises with Indian clubs and dumb-bells, marching, and what the soldiers call “ set- 
ting up drill,” to make them grow up with broad chests, strong muscles and supple 
joints. Each will be taught some trade, and when old enough, required to be so far 
as possible self-sustaining. The enterprise impressed me as being as excellent as 
it is noble. 
Well, I thought, it would n’t take many such schemes to make room for a pretty 
liberal income. I suppose it is as well to invest something in growing sound young- 
sters as in patching broken oldsters. 
I was puzzled to know how any very considerable amount could be saved for 
charitable work, when an army of employes, almost equaling the patients in num-' 
ber, are constantly under pay, and at great expense for board and lodging, and 
when the best of hotel accommodations and excellent board are furnished at so 
moderate a price as $1.00 a day. I soon found the secret, however, in the fact that 
all engaged in the Institution, from the superintendent down, are interested in its 
humane purposes; and while the ordinary helpers receive perhaps as much as they 
could earn elsewhere, managers and physicians, whose services are invaluable to the 
institution, cheerfully labor for the most moderate compensation. No one connected with the Institution, or indeed any other person, has ever received the smallest 
tion of its earnings. Every dollar is jealously guarded by the managers, to be used 
for the benefit of suffering humanity, either in adding to the facilities of the Institu- 
tion or in the treatment of the worthy sick poor. 
U/f?at Jaid. 
Having finished my day of tramp and inspection, surely I felt, even to my legs, 
that the Sanitarium was not “one-horse” in size, and saw well enough that it was 
not one-idea in theory, but was in both points broad-chested and good looking. 
Still I thought I’d see what the folks said who’d tried it ; so, both in person and 
through a lady friend, I interviewed a number. 
‘ ‘ Sick eight years, in bed three ; came on a cot last September ; now just a-go- 
ing home sound and happy ; a surgical operation did it,” was the story, short and 
sweet, of one bright-eyed woman I saw swinging the dumb-bells. 
A young woman said, “ I came three months ago, bed-fast with spinal com- 
plaint, a skeleton that couldn’t stand up. Now see me, 126-pounder, going home 
next week.” And she was a nice picture—not framed in corsets, either. A sandy-haired young man smiled as he answered: “You bet I like it. I camishi 
here a few weeks ago, scrawny, and stomach so sore with indigestion that every step 
was painful. I’m not well now, but digesting fair rations, gaining a pound a week, 
taking light exercise, and full of hope. There seems to be a lot of common sense 
here, and if I get rid in one year of what it took ten years to load myself with, I 
think I’ll be mighty satisfied.” 
A youth of twelve years was in charge of an aunt, who said of him : “ When we 
came here a few weeks ago, Sumner was so full of catarrh he could not breathe 
through his nose at all; emaciated in all his limbs, could not sustain his weight 
with both hands. Some of his doctors said he could not live a year. Now, you 
see, he breathes easily, is in good flesh and heart, and goes ten consecutive times 
through the row of swinging rings, the whole length of the gymnasium. Five ab- 
normal growths have been removed from his nose and throat, and his outlook for 
life is good.” 
Well, these cases reflect the general tone of remarks among patients, the most 
hearty approval coming from those who have been here longest, the grumblers seem- 
ing to be those who, having labored half a lifetime to acquire a first-class chronic 
disease, don’t see any virtue in treatment that won’t bankrupt the mischief in a week. Cjrits ar?d fT\oral5. 
Just looking into the shipping office of Secretary Hall, I learned that he was 
shipping from twenty to fifty lots of food daily—grains, crackers, granola, et al.; 
then I noticed the doctors on their evening round among patients, and will end my 
healthy gossip by quoting the Institution’s circular on the local morality : “ Sectari- 
anism is not encouraged. All persons employed in the Institution are believed to 
be Christian ladies and gentlemen, and it is the effort of the managers to maintain 
in the Institution a spirit of genuine, elevated, unobtrusive Christianity, believing 
that genuine religion is one of the most helpful of all means by which the suffer- 
ing, despairing, will-weakened invalid may be brought into right relations with the 
laws of God which govern his physical well-being. Persons who do not hold to any 
religious faith are made welcome as others, but are requested not to disturb others 
by irreligious talk or conduct.” 
James Clement Ambrose. Main Building of the *Tt * h 
Surgical Sanitarium, 
Battle Creek, Michigan.