Kellogg hoped to become a teacher, and at age 16 taught a district school in Hastings, Michigan. By age 20, he had enrolled in a teacher's training course offered by Michigan State Normal School. The Kelloggs and the Whites, however, convinced him to join his half-brother Merritt, Edson White, William C. White, and Jennie Trembley, as students in a six-month medical course at Russell Trall's Hygieo-Therapeutic College in Florence Township, New Jersey. Their goal was to develop a group of trained doctors for the Adventist-inspired Western Health Reform Institute in Battle Creek. Under the Whites' patronage, John Harvey Kellogg went on to attend medical school at the University of Michigan and the Bellevue Hospital Medical College in New York City. He graduated in 1875 with a medical degree. In October 1876, Kellogg became director of the Western Health Reform Institute. In 1877, he renamed it the Battle Creek Medical Surgical Sanitarium, cleverly coining the term "sanitarium" to suggest both hospital care and the importance of sanitation and personal health.
