ABSTRACT

In his The Stomach: Its Disorders, and How to Cure Them (1896), Kellogg presents a cure for the new “American malady,” dyspepsia. For him “Americans enjoyed the unenviable, but nevertheless deserved, reputation of being a nation of dyspeptics” (Kellogg 1896: 17). It is dyspepsia, rather than George Miller Beard’s “American Disease” of “neurasthenia” (1869) that defined the pathology of modernity for Kellogg. Indeed, he lumps such nervous disorders under “gastric neurasthenia” and argues that they can be cured through diet, rather than through electrotherapy. To prove this, Kellogg presented his theory of diet and dieting in light of the newest science of bacteriology. It is a new science for a new reformed America.