Eugenics and the American Religion of Wellness

Morning callisthenics at the Battle Creek Sanitarium

‘Do you really want to be perfectly well?’ So begins a tantalizing advert in Good Health magazine in 1905. It invited the reader to the Battle Creek Sanitarium in Michigan, where countless specialists are ‘studying this one thing alone — how to get well and how to stay well.’ For $85 a week ($1,200 in today’s money), you could stay in one of the San’s 400 rooms, each with private bathrooms and hot running…