Cornflakes were invented to suppress masturbation

John Harvey Kellogg ran a sanitarium in Battle Creek, Michigan, and believed that masturbation was the root of some thirty-nine diseases, from epilepsy to “bashfulness in the presence of strangers”. His prescription was a diet deliberately stripped of anything stimulating: no meat, no spices, no sugar. Plain flaked corn was the centrepiece.

The rest of what he wrote is far darker than the cereal. In his 1877 book Plain Facts for Old and Young he recommended, in print, circumcision without anaesthetic on boys specifically so the pain would be remembered, and carbolic acid applied to the clitoris of girls. He and his wife had no children and, by his own account, never consummated the marriage.