Yesterday

Perhaps the most unusual man ever to live in Washtenaw Counnty was Doctor Daniel B. Kellogg, the clairvoyant physician. No relation to the famous Kelloggs of Battle Creek, our county's Kellogg nevertheless rose from humble beginnings to command a comfortable fortune, while his reputation, as a historian noted in 1881, "was very extensive, and his practice reached all over this country and even to Europe." Could any start in life have been humbler -- or more in tune with American mythology -- than young Daniel's? His infant cries first pierced the silent isolation of a rude log cabin on section 32, Pittsfield Township, on January 22, 1834. His father, Horace, a pioneer from Oneida County, New York, had built the frontier house of unhewn logs in shanty style, with a single slope to the roof and a tapering chimney of sticks. "This rough and grotesque specimen of pioneer architecture has long since passed into oblivion," Daniel wrote of the birthplace in his Autobiography, or Explanation of Clairvoyance, a little book of two hundred pages published in 1869 at Dr. Chase's Steam Printing House in Ann Arbor. The book was actually written during the preceding summer, when Dr. Kellogg was only thirty-four. It may seem premature for a physician to write his memoirs at that age.but the public was already begging for them, for Dr. Kellogg was no ordinary healer. To begin with, he had never studied medicine. He had no knowledge of the germ theory of disease. He performed diagnoses only unconscious. He dictated his prescriptions in a language he himself couldn't understand. Like many doctors today, he never made housecalls. They weren 't really necessary; he could diagnose patients as easily by mail. "I examined persons who were absent as well as those who were present," he wrote, "and medicallv treated hundreds of individuals whom I had never seen." He called himself a "dependent clairvoyant medium," and i devoted nearly half of his book to a weighty discussion of the , nature of "clear visión," the literal translation of the French I word "clairvoyance." His philosophy tied together all I aspects of spiritualism, from seance-triggered table rappings to profound speculations about the hereafter. "Of course, the sober denizens of these extremely quiet precincts were attacked with an irresistible desire to view the strange phenomena," Daniel wrote. He himself proved to be the best subject among several who volunteered. Given tobáceo to eat, he was made to believe he was chewing delicious candy. Intrigued, Daniel's father soon after gathered a group of neighboring farmers to investígate spirit workings, using Daniel as a subject. Their curiosity was stimulated in part by news reports of the "Rochester rappings," a famous series of episodes of poltergeist manifestations among the Fox family of Hydesville, New York, which had begun in 1848. At first reluctant to take part, Daniel Kellogg proved a quick study. Soon people all over Pittsfield were joining hands with him, forming magie circles to hear rappings, witness automatic writing, and watch the parlor furniture dance as if bewitched. A miserable student, Daniel had left school for good when he turned fifteen. Now, as his powers developed, he astonished friends and skeptics alike. He led a doublé life. "Ordinarily I was a shy, uneducated, hard working mechante," he wrote, .' "But when in my superior or otherwise, my tnind passed into a delightful state of mental tranquility. My thoughts were extremely peaceful. I viewed with unutterable emotions of gladness a mental visión of happiness. I contemplated the principies of friendship and of universal love. My soul seemed to expand with mighty powers of penetration. . . . surrounding objects were glowing with illuminating tints, more or less brilliant and magnetical." Fire On The Spine "For a while," he continued, "I imagined that the earth and its inhabitants had been suddenly translated into a brilliant paradise." But his perceptions didn't stop at surface beauty. Gradually, he was able to inspect, "with perfect ease, the internal organization of every person in the room." He saw all of the bodily organs, from the brain to the spleen, each giving out its own light, while "the spinal column appeared as an unceasing stream of electric fire, and the brain as a reservoir of brilliant electric tints." Work of Kellogg' s supernatural perceptions spread rapidly. His intuitive grasp of the nature of disease ("a want of equilibrium in the circulation of the vitalic principies") was coupled with an instinctive knowledge of appropriate remedies. His career had reached a turning point; such gifts could not be hidden beneath a bushei or squandered in a life of manual labor. As demand for his diagnoses increased, Kellogg found himself spending more and more time in the trance state. If he was to help suffering mankind and earn a living too, he would have to turn professional. He soon did so. Dr. Kellogg was modest enough not to claim full credit for his many cures. Much of his success as a clairvoyant medium depended on his spirit guides. The spirit of an Indian physician named Walapaca examined the patients during the Doctor's early practice, which commenced in 1853, when he was nineteen. At the time he wrote his Autobiography. fifteen years later, Walapace had retired and been succeeded by "another representative of our red brethren, known by my numerous friends a 'Owosso.' " While under their influence, i Kellogg claimed, hespoke "in the Indian dialect." Walapaca may have neglected to teil him that the Indians north of Mexico spoke at least two hundred different tongucs, but he didn't hesitate to teach Kellogg an object lesson in medical "How long will the science of spiritualism remain a mystery to the world?" Kellogg asked. It all seemed quite simple to him, and he presented a detailed outline of the "science" in his stuffy, puffy prose. The ability of the spirit to command the body he saw as based on electric forces "generated by the chemical action of the blood" which, containing iron, was affected by magnetic impulses. From there it was an easy jump to understand how a clairvoyant medium in a negative "magnetic" or trance state (which we now cali hypnosis could be affected by positive electrical charges from disembodied spirits. Because spirit charges are positive, or controlling, only negative people made good mediums. How to teil? "A negative temperament, "said the Doctor, "is generally indicated by a warm, moist hand, while persons with habitually cold hands are positive." There was never a more susceptible medium than Dr. Kellogg himself. He must have had the dampest pair of palms in Michigan. His fïrst awareness of his gifts carne when he was about seventeen. An itinerant hypnotist came through Pittsfield Township one winter, stopping to lecture at the district schoolhouse on the Chicago Road (now US 12), not far from the Kellogg family's pleasant acres, where an elegant brick farmhouse marked the site of the rude log shanty that the child Daniel knew. íntellectualprodigy." During a trance, he announced that he would deliver a public lecture on spiritualism at the schoolhouse on the coming Sabbath. His conscious self, reminded of the appointment, at first refused to honor it, then timidly relented. The speech, though he remembered none of it, produced "a look of heart-felt satisfaction" in his friends, while his opposers seemed uncertain and confused. "From these omens," Kellogg wrote, "I judged that my endeavors had been a success." He had reached the "third magnetic degree," the threshold of clairvoyance. Kellogg has left us a vivid picture of his first clairvoyant experience. He recalled that "after a few moments of mental and physical inertia, which was rather pleasant than ethics, withdrawing the Doctor' s. clairvoyant powers tor a month when tempted to pervert them by telling fortunes for a rapid cash return.