If
you were or thought you were suffering from any ailment in the early
20th century, money and faith in its proprietor might bring you to Dr.
John Harvey Kellogg’s famous sanitarium in Battle Creek,
Michigan. Kellogg (of the cereal family) kept his patients on a regimen
of at least five enemas a day; food and drink with unusual names like
protose and kumyss; and no meat, alcohol, tobacco, caffeine, or sex.
Battle Creek had another bustling enterprise at the time: cereal
manufacturing. Scores of entrepreneurs were arriving to start cereal
companies to compete with W. K. Kellogg, John Harvey’s
brother, and C. W. Post (whose “The Road to
Wellville” slogan J. H. Kellogg despised).
T. C. Boyle’s The Road to
Wellville
brings together the two phenomena with verve and historical detail.
Along with portraits of the real-life Kellogg and his adopted son,
George (the latter altered from the real person), Boyle features the
fictional Will and Eleanor Lightbody, a well-to-do New York couple at
the san for a cure, and an aspiring cereal manufacturer, Charlie
Ossining.
Kellogg exercised tyrannic control over this patients that he justified
by a sincere belief in the scientific correctness of his methods. Will
Lightbody has doubts. Diets of milk and grapes don’t help his
stomach, and Will has seen things go wrong, including another
patient’s electrocution during a
“sinusoidal” bath. But Eleanor Lightbody, a
Kellogg-worshipping health nut, insists on staying on at the sanitarium
for month after month. It’s not until Will discovers her in
shameful misbehavior that Eleanor realizes she’s gone off the
deep end.
Meanwhile, Kellogg’s perfect self-image is frustrated by his
inability to control the hostile, destructive George. And Charlie takes
as long as Eleanor to have his eyes opened — in his case, to
his partner’s bilking him and their investors — and
by that point he can’t bring himself to take the honest path.
For a long book, The Road to
Wellville
is a quick read and easy to digest. Boyle is know for his exuberant,
entertaining style. He has commented that he tried to keep his
portrayal of the sanitarium relatively accurate — adding,
however, that he may have applied his legendary wit too heavily in
deflating Kellogg.
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