[ExI] Medical power of attorney for cryonicsts

[spike]

From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Dave Sill
Sent: Sunday, December 07, 2014 9:01 AM
To: ExI chat list
Subject: Re: [ExI] Medical power of attorney for cryonicsts

 

On Fri, Dec 5, 2014 at 2:34 PM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:

>>…In Kellogg’s defense, he saved way more patients than he slew, by promoting low-fat diets, exercise, and complete abstinence from tobacco, recreational drugs and alcohol.  No doubt people who followed his advice were healthier.  He was ahead of his time in many areas.  But he did slay perhaps hundreds with the radon.

 

>…Can't let this go unchallenged. Kellogg was a religious kook who employed pretty barbaric methods to achieve his goals--e.g., circumcision without anaesthetic to "treat" masturbation. (Read his Wikipedia entry for a primer.) Also, the promotion of low-fat, high-cereal diets probably killed more people than his radon experiments.  –Dave

 

Ja he was a mixture of good and bad.  That whole masturbation thing, oy.  OK so he was crazy.  Most people who do great things are crazy.  His was a particularly unfortunate hang-up.  He was really against the safest sex.  One can never catch anything from Molly Thumb and her four daughters.  

Regarding low-fat high-cereal diets, do consider the alternatives of the day.  Meat was sold with little or no oversight, and you can be sure that it wasn’t wasted just because it was spoiled or the beasts were diseased.  The meat was thrown into the grinder and made into sausage (one of the breakfast staples of the day) and evolution-knows what went in there.  Given food-production standards of Kellogg’s time, breakfast cereal was a great option.  Today when we can get sanitary alternatives, not so much.  In balance, breakfast cereal was probably a good thing; it was cheap, fast, stores long term, it was well-suited to feeding the masses in a time when people were leaving farms for the city.  I still eat it to this day, plenty of us do.  

Note that Kellogg began medical practice as a teenager (the proto-Doogie Houser MD) in the 1860s, even before attending medical school, which was then a 4 month course of questionable value.  We need to judge him and his work by the standards of his times rather than ours.

spike  

 

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