Schwarz, Richard W. John Harvey Kellogg: Pioneering Health Reformer. Hagerstown, MD: Review and Herald, 2006. 240 pp. Hardcover, $17.99.
This latest installment in the Adventist Pioneer Series is a biography on Dr. John Harvey Kellogg. The subtitle succinctly states Kellogg’s impact upon the medical work of the Seventh-day Adventist Church: “pioneer health reformer.” Up until Dr. Kellogg took the helm of the fledging water cure known simply as the Health Reform Institute, Kellogg was able to transform it into the world famous Battle Creek Sanitarium.
This biography is the third printing of (1970, 1981) of Schwarz’s biography by an Adventist press. The three earlier volumes in this series (Gerald Wheeler, James White: Innovator and Overcomer [Review and Herald, 2003]; George R. Knight, Joseph Bates: The Real Founder of Seventh-day Adventism [Review and Herald, 2004]; Gilbert M. Valentine, W. W. Prescott: Forgotten Giant of Adventism’s Second Generation [Review and Herald, 2005]) all contain copious footnotes. This volume is a certain “departure” (as noted by series editor George Knight) from the other volumes in the series, but it seems to me to be more than that, and that it really does not belong in such a series at all. While Knight (and Schwarz in his original introduction) both refer readers to Schwarz’s dissertation at the University of Michigan (1964), not only does this new edition not contain any footnotes, but it does not utilize any of the research on Kellogg that has been done in the intervening forty years. As a recent example, Ronald L. Numbers has done research on Kellogg’s views about sexuality which is not dealt with (see Ronald L. Numbers, “Sex, Science, and Salvation: The Sexual Advice of Ellen G. White and John Harvey Kellogg,” in Right Living: An Anglo-American Tradition of Self-Help Medicine and Hygiene, ed. Charles E. Rosenberg [Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 2003], 206-226). Similarly, there are numerous other books that have included Kellogg that should be included in the reissuing of such a biography. At the very least, one could have hoped for a bibliography which has not been included in this current edition as the other three volumes in the series have. Additionally, the other three volumes in the series also represent current research on their subjects. Even Valentine’s biography on Prescottis updated and expanded (his original biography was published by Andrews University Press in 1992). The inclusion of this biography on Kellogg by Schwarz, while Knight considers it “one of the very best biographies ever published by an Adventist press” (10), is in reality a sign of a possibly stalling series of Adventist biographies. One can only wonder whether Knight has the interest and whether he has generated enough momentum to carry this series through in his retirement and as he begins an ambitious Bible commentary project (his latest volume is Exploring Galatians and Ephesians [Review and Herald, 2005]).
This latest volume in this series is attractively bound and appears beautiful with the three previously published volumes. I am certain that it is deeply gratifying to the author to reissue what is still the standard biography on Dr. John Harvey Kellogg. Yet the publication of this volume was a real opportunity to synthesize research over the past four decades and to spur on new research on the life and contributions of such a complex individual. One can only hope that a new biography that examines these nuances will be forthcoming in the near future.
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