The Real Road to Wellville: Dr. John Harvey Kellogg and the Battle Creek Sanitarium

About the Event

From 1876 to 1943, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg presided over the Battle Creek Sanitarium, an institution that was one of the largest and best-known health and wellness facilities in the United States—“a combination nineteenth-century European health spa and a twentieth-century Mayo Clinic.” In his talk, Professor Wilson will trace this fascinating history, emphasizing the role Dr. Kellogg’s developing religious views played in the rise and fall of the Battle Creek Sanitarium.

Brian C. Wilson is Professor of Comparative Religion and Distinguished Faculty Scholar at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Michigan. A native of Santa Clara, California, he earned a B.S. in Medical Microbiology from Stanford University and, after three years in the Peace Corps (Honduras and the Dominican Republic), went on to earn an M.A. in Hispanic Studies from the Monterey Institute of International Studies and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Religious Studies from UC Santa Barbara. Professor Wilson joined the faculty of the WMU Department of Comparative Religion in 1996. His areas of research and teaching include American religious history with an emphasis on new religious movements; religion and medicine; and spiritual biography. Among his most recent books are Dr. John Harvey Kellogg and the Religion of Biologic Living and John E. Fetzer and the Quest for the New Age, both recipients of the Historical Society of Michigan State History Award.