Michiana Adventist Forum Presents: Ron Numbers
The Michiana Adventist Forum presents
John Harvey Kellogg: His Lives and Obsessions in Medicine and Religion
with
Ronald Numbers, PhD
Hilldale Professor of the History of Science and Medicine
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Saturday afternoon at 3:30 pm
March 30, 2019
Chan Shun Hall
Andrews University
Berrien Springs, MI
About the Speaker:
Dr. Numbers is Emeritus Professor of the History of Science and Medicine at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he has been on the faculty since 1974. Prior to joining the faculty there, he served on the faculty at Andrews University and Loma Linda University School of Medicine. He is a past president of both the American Society of Church History and the History of Science Society.
His has published over 25 scholarly books dealing with the history of science and medicine. His pioneering work, Prophetess of Health: A Study of Ellen G. White, led to a revolution in Ellen White studies within the Seventh-day Adventist denomination. His forthcoming book on the physician Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, an influential but controversial figure in Adventist history, is scheduled for publication by Harvard University Press this year.
About the Subject:
The flamboyant Dr. John Harvey Kellogg—inventor of flaked cereals and peanut butter, promoter of frequent bowel movements, best-selling author of sexual and dietary manuals, and prolific sanitarium builder–is no stranger to either Seventh-day Adventists or students of American medicine and culture. Indeed, at the time of his being disfellowshiped from the church in 1907 for his immanentist view of God, he was the most famous Adventist in the world and one of the best known physicians in America. After separating from the Adventists, he became a major player in the emerging eugenics movement. As a 25-year-old newly minted doctor, and despite being the least qualified—and certainly the least experienced—physician to tackle this sensitive and controversial subject, he published the first version of his much reprinted and expanded Plain Facts about Sexual Life, which over the decades earned him a small fortune.
