Corn Flakes inventor John Kellogg wanted to sew your foreskin with silver wire or burn off your clitoris with carbolic acid; but he was actually somewhat on target with his equally bizarre practice of yogurt enemas

Yes, you read that correctly.  (HT: Ray Sawhill)

We know John Harvey Kellogg as the founder of the Kellogg’s cereal company and the inventor of corn flakes. However, around the turn of the 20th century, Kellogg became renowned for his work as an anti-masturbation crusader, prescribing unusual — and borderline sadistic — solutions to the menace of young boys and girls touching their privates.

And by “uncomfortable,” we mean that even reading about them will make your genitals retreat into your body and grow an exoskeleton.

Oddly enough, though, one truly wacky idea he had makes some sense:

Kellogg had another hobby: filling his patients’ asses with yogurt. He was a medical officer at Michigan’s Battle Creek Sanitarium, where he invented an enema machine to make sure the inmates’ intestines were clean. This machine administered gallons of water and yogurt into people’s mouths and anuses, “thus planting the protective germs where they are most needed and may render most effective service.”

Now, we have probiotic yogurts (though eaten rather than taken in enema form), and we now have fecal transplants for similar purposes (which are administered indeed through enemas, not eating).