USA > Michigan > Calhoun County > History of Calhoun county, Michigan : a narrative account of its historical progress, its people, and its principal interests, Volume I > Part 44
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The business was skilfully advertised and grew very rapidly, demand- ing frequent additions to the manufacturing equipment, and the plant grew fast. This attracted widespread attention and other capitalists and brought in a great number of promotors who inaugurated a veritable "boom" later on.
Before the "boom" was started Mr. Post had perfected the now widely-known food called "Grape-Nuts." After this product had added to the fame of Battle Creek food products the "boom" got well under way.
The first competing company to be organized was The Battle Creek Cereal Food Company which was chartered March 20, 1897. Associated in the management of this company which had a capital of $25,000, were Wm. Heffley, David Quinn, J. A. S. Derby and W. H. Jones. This com- pany produced a cereal beverage which was widely advertised and for a time was successfully marketed.
On June 11, 1897, another company came into being known as The Moko Health Drink Company, claiming a capitalization of $50,000. Managing the affairs of this corporation were John C. Reynolds, C. W. Sellers and W. A. Crosby. The product of the company was a cereal drink called "Moko" and it was the first to possess a fanciful name the like of which characterized the "boom." Most of the products were given old soubriquets, catchy in many instances and easy to remember. These names widely advertised made possible many a sally of wit at the expense of the breakfast food industry. These companies flourished briefly, at least, and furnished an incentive for the organization of others. The idea of preparing food from the kernels of nuts then was capitalized, the Sanitas Nut Food Company, Ltd., being authorized to begin operation January 25, 1899. Directing the destinies of this company were W. K. Kellogg, Wilfred C. Kellogg, L. E. D. Lawson and others.
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Many other similar companies were organized along the same general lines, all producing cereal foods and drinks.
On August 12, 1901, the Korn Krisp Company was organized with a capital of $300,000 and began the manufacture and sale of flake food in commercial quantities in Battle Creek. The success of this venture, temporarily, was very marked. The light, palatable flaked corn proved very salable and many new companies subsequently undertook the manu- facture of other varieties of flake foods.
From 1901 to 1905 new companies were formed over night. There were at one time thirty-two food manufacturing concerns in operation in Battle Creek. Records of incorporation do not include all of the com- panies that were launched. Many were never incorporated. Families invested savings in cereal manufacturing machinery and set up manu- facturing plants in sheds and even in tents. The market at the begin- ning clamored for new foods, but in a short time the inevitable reaction came, leaving intact the original food factories, whose successes the imi- tators have sought to follow.
The present large food factories in Battle Creek supply many million dollars' worth of food and beverages to the world at large, the products going into every corner of the globe.
These food factories are notably clean and their products pure and manufactured on scientific principles.
The largest plant is that of the Postum Cereal Co., Ltd., which is owned by C. W. Post and his daughter, Mrs. E. B. Close.
This business was conducted for a time without being incorporated and previous to its incorporation Mr. Post joined in another small cor- poration for the purpose of marketing some other products.
This will account for the fact that his name appears as one of the organizers of the Battle Creek Health Food Company in December 6, 1895-whereas the Postum Cereal Company, Ltd., was organized October 26, 1896.
The sanitarium, under Dr. Kellogg, produces a great variety of dif- ferent kinds of healthful foods, which are served on the sanitarium tables and shipped to customers from the sanitarium food factories.
It is safe to say that every prepared food made in Battle Creek is not only made in a cleanly manner, but is healthful and nourishing.
This is a well-known fact, and can be proven by a visit to any of the factories. Visitors are given a cordial welcome and in some of the factories-notably the Postum Cereal Company, Ltd., large numbers of visitors are in attendance daily being shown every niche and corner of the works.
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BATTLE CREEK SANITARIUM Old Main Buildings destroyed by fire February 18, 1902
CHAPTER XXI
THE SANITARIUM AND MEMORIAL HOSPITAL
BIRTH OF BATTLE CREEK SANITARIUM-ENTER DR. J. H. KELLOGG- CHANGE OF NAME-FIRST SANITARIUM BUILDINGS-FIRE OF 1902- NEW MAIN STRUCTURE-COURSES AND MEANS OF TREATMENT-TRAIN- ING SCHOOL FOR NURSES-EDUCATIONAL WORK-A PURELY PHILAN- THROPIC INSTITUTION-HASKELL HOME FOR ORPHANS AND DESTITUTE CHILDREN-NICHOLS MEMORIAL HOSPITAL AND CHARITABLE UNION.
This chapter is worthily devoted to the history and description of two institutions of which Battle Creek is justly proud-the Battle Creek Sani- tarium and the Nichols Memorial Hospital.
BIRTH OF BATTLE CREEK SANITARIUM
The Battle Creek Sanitarium, as befits an American institution that has attained phenomenal success, began in a humble way. It was not born in a log cabin, it is true, but what was almost as modest, it began in a frame farm house, in the environs of what was then the village of Battle Creek.
The Western Health Reform Institute-the original name of the institution-was organized in the autumn of 1866, with a physician and assistants in charge. The following winter the legislature enacted a law, making provision for the incorporation of health institutions, and May 17, 1867, the institute entered upon its corporate existence, stock to the extent of $26,100 having been sold.
The points of "reform" on which the founders laid emphasis were chiefly diet, dress, and the substitution of water treatment for drugs. To supplement its work the institute issued a monthly journal, called The Health Reformer. The Reformer was a small sixteen-page sheet, and was edited by the physician in charge.
ENTER DR. J. H. KELLOGG
Nine years later, Dr. J. H. Kellogg having become associated with the institute in the capacity of physician-in-chief, plans were laid for a more commodious building, the growing patronage filling the original structure and necessitating the renting of rooms in the neighborhood to accom- Vol. 1-24
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modate the patients. Work was soon begun on a building one hundred and forty-six feet long, four stories and basement, situated on the site occupied by the present main building. This structure was completed and dedicated April 10, 1878. A large number of prominent men and women from various parts of the United States were present at the dedi- cation, and the building was declared to be the "largest and most per- fectly constructed edifice of its kind in America, and the only one of note, especially built for, and adapted to, the purpose of a hygienic hospital and home for the sick;" but the renting of rooms in nearby residences again became necessary.
Coincident with the increase in patronage under the new manage- ment was the growing recognition by physicians and scientists throughout the country of the importance of the scientific principles upon which the work of the Sanitarium was based. Institutions of healing were not unknown; there were hospitals which represented each some new thera- peutic agent that in most cases was regarded as a panacea for human ills and that was thus exploited to the negleet of other measures equally valuable. This was true of the so-called "water cures" that were so numerous both in this country and Europe about the middle of the last century, and of the electrical establishments, movement institutes, diet cures, and other institutions. The new management of the sanitarium was early impressed with the need of an establishment where patients could have the advantages of all the natural methods of cure-scientific feeding, massage, applications of electricity, baths and other like meas- ures. The idea was to add to the advantages of the ordinary hospital all the recently developed resources of physiological medicine and to make provision for the practical application of the discoveries of Voit, Pettenkofer and others in diet and scentifie nutrition.
CHANGE OF NAME
In view of this larger conception of a sanitarium and its work, the name Western Health Reform Institute was felt to be inadequate, and so the word "sanitarium" was coined to meet the case by modifying the word "sanatorium," which was then defined by Webster's dictionary as "in England a health resort for invalid soldiers." This was the first use of the word "sanitarium."
The unique character of the sanitarium came to the recognized by physicians in every part of the world, and the institution rapidly acquired a reputation for the diversity, thoroughness and scientific accu- racy of its treatments. The result was that the sanitarium soon con- tained patients from every state in the Union-extremely difficult cases, many of them, sent by physicians who wished them to benefit by certain kinds of treatment whose administration the institution had carried to approximate perfection, or of a combination of treatments. Thus as early as 1877 a report showed the treatment of 493 patients without a single death.
In 1884 the need of more room had become urgent, so urgent, indeed, that the new gymnasium recently erected, forty-five by eighty-five feet in
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size, was pressed into service as a dining room; the dining room in the older structure, being inadequate for the increased patronage, was con- verted into offices and laboratories. A six-story addition was accordingly ereeted at the south end of the main building, devoted, the first floor to a beautiful dining room that accommodated five hundred guests, and the remaining floors to patients' rooms.
FIRST SANITARIUM BUILDINGS
Including this new addition the sanitarium now measured four hun- dred and seventy-five feet, ineluding a rear extension of one hundred feet that had been built, with a width of from forty to fifty-four feet. The south extension practically doubled the capacity of the building, but it was not long before the need of more room was again felt.
GRAND MARCH IN GYMNASIUM
In 1888, accordingly, a hospital building, five stories high, was erected just north of the main structure, aeross what was known as Barbour street. Here were accommodated charity patients, of which the sani- tarium has always cared for a large number, together with a surgical ward and operating room.
So rapid was the growth of the sanitarinm patronage, however, that even these extensions did not afford sufficient capacity, and in 1890 there was added to the north end of the main building a six-story addition, uniform in general style with the south addition built in 1884. The main building at the same time was raised one story, giving the sanitarium a total capacity of five hundred patients.
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Room still remained at a premium, however, and a large number of rooms continued to be hired in neighborhood houses, although the insti- tution had purchased and erected a considerable number of cottages, while during the summer months several patients were accommodated in a commodious villa built at Lake Goguac in 1867, and which still stands.
With the rapid growth in patronage the housing of the large army of employees became a pressing problem. Thus far these had been roomed, for the most part, in cottages, but in the year 1894 a large building, five stories and basement, was erected on a site a hundred yards back of the main building. This structure, which became known as East Hall, still stands, but since the fire has been used for patients.
In the year 1897 a beautiful chapel was added to the gymnasium, being connected with the latter by sliding partitions, the two being com- bined for the holding of lectures and other meetings, affording a seating capacity of a thousand persons.
FIRE OF 1902
In the early morning of February 18, 1902, the main building and hospital, together with the "annex," the original building, were com- pletely destroyed by fire, the patients (about four hundred in number) and helpers providentially escaping without loss of life. Homes in the immediate vicinity of the sanitarium were very generously thrown open for the reception of patients until permanent quarters could be arranged for; East Hall was hastily fitted up for the use of patients, as were also South and West Halls, dormitories of the Battle Creek College, while many of the rooms in the college building itself were made over for guest rooms. In this way, and by economizing in the accommodations afforded by the numerous cottages, the patients were soon comfortably housed. Treatment rooms were fitted up in East Hall and in the college building, and dining facilities in East Hall, so that, save for the slight inconve- nience to the guests in getting to their treatments and meals, sanitarium life proceeded very much as before.
NEW MAIN STRUCTURE
The management turned its attention without delay to the construc- tion of a new building; on the 11th of May following, the corner stone was laid amid impressive ceremonies, and a year later, on May 31, 1903, the new main building was dedicated. Invitations were sent out by state officials, and Governor Bliss, though unable at the last moment to be present, sent a representative in the person of his private secretary, Major H. E. Johnson. President Roosevelt, Attorney-General Knox and Secretary Root sent messages of congratulaton, and regretted that they were unable to be present. Governors Toole, of Montana, Cummins, of Iowa, Durbin, of Indiana, Smith, of Maryland, Pennypacker, of Pennsyl- vania, Bates, of Massachusetts, White, of Dakota, Dockery, of Missouri, and Mickey, of Nebraska, also acknowledged their personal interest in the occasion in appropriate terms. And Hon. Perry F. Powers, who presided
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MAIN BUILDING ERECTED 1902-03
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over the exercises, remarked in his opening address: "There has come into our national and individual lives a realization of the fact that he gains most for himself who gives out most, from whose life comes the greatest benefits to those about him. We are celebrating today a glorious victory, the dedication of an institution that will make life better and the term, 'a citizen of Michigan' a prouder title than ever." In a special article to the press, in which he called public attention to the work of the sanitarium, Mr. Powers pointed out that "the Battle Creek Sanitarium is not a state institution, so far as state control and state appropriations are concerned. It adds nothing to the burden of state taxation, and requires from no citizen payments of rates or taxes to provide for its helpful existence; but it is a worthy and most desirable state institution from every other point of view. It has assisted in spreading the name and fame of Michigan throughout the civilized sections of the globe ; and in far-off South Africa and Australia and New Zealand, in all the great commercial centers of Europe, and in the islands of the sea, Michigan is known, and the acquaintance will be increased through the establishment of institutions similar to the greater and older establishment at Battle Creek. An important public purpose fulfilled by the Battle Creek Sanitarium, and one which gives it especial value to Michigan and our neighboring states, is the service it has rendered as a training-school for physicians and nurses. Michigan is proud of its great university at Ann Arbor, and the hundreds of thousands of dollars annually required to meet the expenses of that great educational institution are. cheerfully paid from the pockets of the people in order that its great work may be continued and its progress encouraged. Yet it can hardly be said that less value has come to our state from an institution such as the Battle Creek Sanitarium, which has sent out over one thousand nurses and physicians (now more than 2,200), trained and equipped not only through demonstrations of the laboratory and discussions in the class-room, but by anxious days and nights of careful and conscientious service in the practical battle against death and disease."
Professor M. V. O'Shea, of the University of Wisconsin, in the course of an address, remarked, of the ideals for which the new institution stands : "This magnificent institution which we dedicate today is a grand and glorious exponent of rational methods in therapeutics and hygiene. It is the leader in the great movement to adopt natural methods in the cure of disease and in the conduct of daily life. In its laboratories it is striving ever to add to the sum of human knowledge regarding the way in which the human body is constructed and the manner in which every member thereof serves the whole most effectively. And then it seeks to discover what alterations occur in the work of any organ in cases of disease; and finally it aims to discover by observation and experi- mentation how members that have fallen out of tune, as it were, may be brought back into harmony with other organs. This institution has developed a great system of rational hygiene, and its influence is spreading to every corner of the earth. Go where one may in this or other lands and you will find those who are loud in their praises of Battle Creek, for it has taught them how to live so that they may
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not only have health and strength, but also that they may through rational living feel in tune with the Infinite."
The new building is six stories high, five hundred fifty feet long and from fifty to sixty feet deep, built in a modified Renaissance style. The front elevation is marked by a beautiful series of six Ionie pillars, super- imposed upon massive arches and flanked by a series of arches that extend in either direction to the wings, forming beautiful loggias. The north and south elevations of the building bear similar porticoes with four columns each. At the rear of the sanitarium a semi-circular space con- tains a palm garden, in which are to be found a beautiful rockery and a splendid growth of tropical plants such as the banana, orange, palms, etc. Radiating from the palm garden, like the spokes of a wheel, and con- neeted by a semi-circular corridor, are three wings which contain, that to the right and left treatment rooms for ladies and for gentlemen, respec- tively, and the center a large gymnasium.
Physicians' offices and a commodious parlor occupy the first floor of the main building. The second, third, fourth and fifth floors are given up to patients' rooms, the north half of the fifth floor being devoted to surgical cases. The operating rooms are at the extreme north end of the sixth floor.
COURSES AND MEANS OF TREATMENT
In the treatment rooms are to be found every facility and device known to modern therapeutics for the cure of disease. Besides the large number of treatments which have originated at the sanitarium, the great medical centers of Europe have been frequently visited and the methods in use in the great clinics and hospitals have been adapted to sanitarium use wherever practicable, with the result that no institution in the world is so fully equipped and able to treat so wide a variety of disorders as the Battle Creek Sanitarium; or, as a visitor from the old world, prominent in social and business life of the great cities of the Continent, once said,:
"I have visited all the great scientific laboratories of Europe. I am familiar with all the tabulated work that has been done in nearly all the great hospitals of Europe, and I am surprised, I am amazed, I am almost confounded, to find that in the Battle Creek Sanitarium laboratory, in its analytical work, in its chemical work, and in other work done by the Battle Creek corps of physicians and chemists, they have far exceeded anything that I have ever known in Europe. They are not only far ahead as to things that they have actually discovered, but they have taken the data which has been furnished them elsewhere, and they have carried their application far beyond those of any other medical scientists in the world."
We may at this point summarize the various methods of cure as per- fected at the sanitarium and employed at the present time, in pursuance of the avowed purposes of the management : "To put into actual, effective and systematic use, every practical method which modern medical sci- ence has provided for the accurate determination of deviations from the normal standard of health in structure or function, and for the estima- tion of the amount of sueh variation, so far as possible expressing these
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VIEW IN MAIN DINING ROOM
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variations by means of co-efficients, so as to make exact comparison possi- ble, to make available in most approved form every rational curative means known to medical science, so that the same may be brought to bear in any individual case, giving special prominence to physical therapy, or so called physiologie therapeutics."
Chief among the treatment is the system of hydrotherapeutie appli- cations, of which there are more than two hundred, including among others, the following: cold, cool, neutral, warm, hot, alternate, pereus- sion, and vapor douches; cold, cool, tonic, neutral and hot graduated douches; hot, tepid, and cool half-baths; cool and tepid shallow baths;
BATTLE CREEK SANITARIUM IN 1876
hot, cold, shallow, running and revulsive foot-baths; warm, hot, revul- sive, and walking leg baths; general, trunk, hip, leg, chest, throat and al- ternate packs; hot, tepid, cool alternate, saline and alcohol sponging; oil, dry, alcohol, witch hazel, dry shampoo, wet mitten, towel, half sheet, and salt rubs; fomentations; compresses; sinusoidal and galvanic elec- tro-hydric baths; air, hot air, Russian, and vapor baths.
Many of these water applications originated at the sanitarium, while others were devised in Europe and were proved of worth by long years of practice before being adopted at the sanitarium: Hot and cold water ac- complish a wide variety of results, in single or in a large number of com- plications-effects both stimulant and quieting, not only upon the skin.
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with which the applications are brought into direct contact, but upon every organ and function of the body. Wonderful effects are produced by proper applications upon the heart and circulation, the absorption of oxygen by the lungs, heat production and elimination, absorption of food- stuffs, liver action, kidney activity, stomach and intestinal secretion and movement and general vital resistance. By suitable applications, either hot or cold, or hot and cold in alternation, reflex effects may be produced which exert a powerful influence upon the circulation and in this way excite or depress the activity of the heart, the brain and the spinal cord, the stomach, the intestines, the bladder, the kidneys, or any organ the work of which it may be desirable to influence.
Along with water, light has been found of immense value, both the arc and the incandescent lights being applied in a large variety of ways and in a large number of diseases. Many of the light treatments were devised at the sanitarium, notably the electric light bath, which is now employed in all parts of the world.
The electric current is also used with success, the sanitarium being the first institution to use what has become known as the "sinusoidal", current, and the application of which, like the electric light bath, is found not only in America but in Europe as well. Besides the sinusoidal cur- rent the sanitarium employs in a large number of cases the galvanic, faradie, static and high frequency currents.
Another instrument that has recently been brought from Europe further employs the electric current as a means of applying heat to any point of the interior of the body. The treatment is known as "diathermy," or "thermo-penetration," and is especially effective in the relief of pain.
A radium department has also been recently added, one of the most complete radium departments in the world, by means of which radium is applied in Battle Creek quite as effectively as in Joachimsthal and other places in Europe.
The X-ray has proved of immense value not only in the treatment of disease, but in diagnosis as well. One of the latest additions to the sanitarium equipment is what is known as the X-ray cinematograph. This instrument not only photographs the internal organs, but repro- duces their movements on a moving-picture film. This is especially valuable in the diagnosis of cases in which the action of the stomach and alimentary canal is faulty, as it enables the physician to give these pro- longed study and to discover the precise point of derangement.
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