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Battle Creek Sanitarium
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Turn-of-the-20th-century breathing exercises
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Location within the state of Michigan
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| Location: | 74 N. Washington St. Battle Creek, Michigan |
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| Built: | 1903 |
| Architect: | Frank M. Andrews |
| Architectural style: | Renaissance, Other |
| Governing body: | General Services Administration |
| NRHP Reference#: | 74000980[1] |
| Significant dates | |
| Added to NRHP: | July 30, 1974 |
| Designated MSHS: | September 7, 1989[2] |
The Battle Creek Sanitarium, in Battle Creek, Michigan, United States, first opened on September 5, 1866, as the Western Health Reform Institute, based on the health principles advocated by the Seventh-day Adventist Church. In 1876, John Harvey Kellogg became the superintendent, and his brother, W. K. Kellogg, worked as the book keeper. In 1878, a new structure was built on the site, but it burned down in 1902. The following year, it was rebuilt, enlarged and renamed The Battle Creek Sanitarium. As Kellogg put it, they took the word Sanatorium, which back then was defined as an English term designating a health resort for invalid soldiers. "A change of two letters transformed 'sanatorium' to 'sanitarium', and a new word was added to the English language". Kellogg states the number of patients grew from 106 in 1866, to 7,006 patrons during the year 1906.[3] "The San" and Kellogg were lampooned in T. Coraghessan Boyle's 1993 novel The Road to Wellville and the 1994 film adaptation.
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Along with high numbers of patrons, there were a large number of staff at Battle Creek. Kellogg stated that "at the Battle Creek Sanitarium, the number of persons employed is never less than eight hundred, and often rises in the busiest season to more than one thousand".[4] They comprised "physicians, nurses, helpers etc".[5] (There were 30 physicians on staff).[6] The main buildings comprised four large buildings, chief of which was the central structure, "which affords rooming accommodations for about 400 guests...(and)...treatment rooms capable of handling more than 1,000 patients"[7]
The Sanitarium became a destination for both prominent and middle-class American citizens. Celebrated American figures who visited the sanitarium (including Mary Todd Lincoln and Sojourner Truth) would influence and encourage enthusiasm for health and wellness among the general population. "Battle Creek Sanitarium was world renowned and became the 'in' place for the rich and famous to seek their lost health, to listen to health lectures and to learn and practice the principles of a healthy lifestyle".[8]
At the sanitarium, Kellogg explored various treatments for his patients, including diet reform and frequent enemas. He encouraged a low-fat, low-protein diet with an emphasis on whole grains, fiber-rich foods, and most importantly, nuts. Kellogg also recommended a daily intake of fresh air, exercise, and the importance of hygiene. Many of the theories of John Harvey Kellogg were later published in his book The Road to Wellness.
Kellogg described the Sanitarium system as "a composite physiologic method comprising hydrotherapy, phototherapy, thermotherapy, electrotherapy, mechanotherapy, dietetics, physical culture, cold-air cure, and health training". To assist with diagnostics and evaluation of therapeutic efficacy, various measures of physiological integrity were utilised to obtain numerous vital coefficients "especially in relation to the integrity and efficiency of the blood, the heart, the lungs, the liver, the kidneys, stomach, intestines, brain, nerves and muscles".[9][a]
Hydrotherapy was widely utilized. Two three-story buildings, for men and women respectively, were devoted to hydrotherapy. Each building had a basement, "devoted to rectal and bowel applications and classrooms". Both buildings were connected to the main building and the 'great gymnasium'. Kellogg noted "That hydrotherapy has won a definite and permanent place in modern rational therapeutics can no longer be questioned, and the Battle Creek Sanitarium claims recognition as the pioneer in scientific hydrotherapy" in America.[10] Indeed, while some therapies from the 19th century and early 20th century have fallen by the wayside, or remain controversial, hydrotherapy remains widely used.
Kellogg's use of hydrotherapy was a more sophisticated development of the system that was utilized in the early 19th century by Vincent Priessnitz, which when introduced to America was essentially a "cold water cure",[11] although "as a tonic, cold water has no superior".[12] "The crude, but thoroughgoing methods of the original system of Priessnitz, which prospered among the hardy mountaineers of Austrian Silesia, were much too strenuous for more delicately organized and pampered American invalids. This fact, together with the crass empiricism which characterized the use of water in the first half of the last century, when water-cures were for a time almost a fad, brought water into general disrepute as a curative means, and greatly hindered the scientific development of this invaluable agent".[11] The Battle Creek system utilized both hot and cold, and correlated the use of hydrotherapy with other therapeutic modalities. Amongst the physiologic tonics used were douches, sitz baths, cold mitten frictions, salt glows, towel rubs, wet sheet rubs, wet and dry packings, compresses, "full baths of various sorts, including Nauheim baths,[b] electro-hydric baths, shallow and neutral baths". The use of hot and cold applications was to produce "profound reflex effects", including vasodilation and vasoconstriction.[12] These physiological mechanisms now seem fairly well understood, and underpin the contemporary use of hydrotherapy,[13] with the reflex reactions described by some as the 'rebound phenomenon'[14]
This department employed both solar and electric light, with the latter used chiefly during winter. Phototherapy held a prominent place at Battle Creek, where the first electric light bath was constructed.[15] Regarding the application of electricity, Kellogg noted that "electricity is not capable of accomplishing half the marvels that are claimed for it by many enthusiastic electrotherapists". Nevertheless, he considered it valuable when used in conjunction with hydrotherapy, thermotherapy, and other methods.[16]
Physical exercise was an important part of the Battle Creek system, facilitating not just the improvement of muscle tone, but also of posture, respiration, and of circulation and the facilitation of anabolic and catabolic functions enabled by circulatory processes. Exercise included such components as postural, calisthetics, gymnastics, swimming, and passive methods such as mechanotherapy, vibrotherapy, mechanical massage.[17]
Exposure to the sun and open air were regarded as fundamentally important for health, including stimulation of the skin. Battle Creek had a large outdoor gymnasium. Again, the use of temperature differentials facilitated by water was a component, with exercise followed by a plunge into a fresh water swimming pool "just cool enough to be refreshing and invigorating".[18] Patients were encouraged to sleep in the open air, and a range of outdoor activities were facilitated, from wood-chopping, to basketball and other games, walking trotting, swimming lessons. Also available were skating, tobogganing, skiing, and other outdoor sports (p. 111). "Thus all the best advantages of the seashore, camping out, 'going fishing', and other forms of recreation are secured, while the patient is protected from excess by the careful guidance of his physician, and has the advantages of medical care, dietetic regulation, etc".[19]
Battle Creek utilised information as known at that time to provide nutritional requirements for health and well-being relative to each person's requirements. Food required careful prescriptive preparation, with care also taken to ensure appetiveness and palatability were recognised. The diet lists included "scores of special dishes and hundreds of special food preparations, each of which has been carefully studied in relation to its nutritive and therapeutic properties", with the diet lists used "by the physicians in arranging the diet prescriptions of individual patients".[20] Also, "all the so-called Sanitarium health foods" were "regularly found on the Sanitarium bill of fare, having been originally devised solely for this use".[21]
After the Wall Street Crash of 1929 few previously well-to-do patients came to the sanitarium. Finances became very difficult for the "San" and the complex was put under receivership in 1933. The sanitarium stayed in business until after the beginning of WWII when the U.S. Army, needing a hospital, paid $2,341,000 and moved in.
In 1942, the United States Army, which had bought the complex, converted the buildings into the Percy Jones Army Hospital for treating soldiers wounded in World War II. In 1954, the U.S. General Services Administration then took it over as the Battle Creek Federal Center and began housing federal agencies and activities, including a GSA Property and Administrative Services, the Defense Logistics Information Service (DLIS), the Defense Reutilization and Marketing Service (DRMS), and the Defense Logistics Agency Systems Integration Office (DSIO-J), among others.
The Battle Creek Sanitarium was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976.[22] Most recently, the building was dedicated the Hart-Dole-Inouye Federal Center in honor of three former and current U.S. Senators who had met as wounded servicemen while they were being treated at the hospital during WWII: Philip Hart, who had been wounded during the Normandy Landings at Utah Beach on D-Day, and Bob Dole and Daniel Inouye, who had been wounded in Italy.[23]
a.' ^ A persual of the main body of the text reveals an impressive use of the available scientific methods of the day. However, the synopsis from the contents page is hard to beat for succinctness, hence the quotations.
b.' ^ A Nauheim or 'effervescent' bath is a type of spa bath through which carbon dioxide is bubbled. It is named after the German spa town[24][25]