Dr. Edwin S. Kellogg
1850-1915

Homeopathy, Abortions
and Prescriptions for Sale

FIND A GRAVE


MONTANA MEMORY PROJECT • BILLINGS PUBLIC LIBRARY • PUBLIC DOMAIN

 

Massachusetts native Dr. Edwin S. Kellogg was a practitioner of the pseudoscience of homeopathy, and one of a number of doctors in Montana who performed illegal abortions in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. He practiced in Helena from about 1885 until his death in 1915. Kellogg had several high-profile scrapes with the law, and with local allopathic (conventional, scientific) physicians. An interesting account of several of those cases can be found in the article "Abortion in the Old West: The Trials of Dr. Edwin S. Kellogg of Helena, Montana" by Todd L. Savitt.

 

Dr. Kellogg's Sanitarium, 29 N. Benton Ave.
Later known as the Brandon Apartments
Demolished in the Early 1970s

The Case of Mary Rodgers

One case not covered in Mr. Savitt's article is that of Mary Rodgers of Gold Hill, in Powell County, Montana, who sought Dr. Kellogg's services in January of 1903. Miss Rodgers subsequently died of septicemia at Kellogg's sanitarium, and evidently lies in an unmarked grave in Helena's old Catholic Cemetery, beneath today's Robinson Park. As always, Kellogg escaped incarceration. Click on the Butte Inter Mountain newspaper page below to open the story of the case (PDF file).

Sold Prescriptions

Newspaper archives reveal that not long before Dr. Kellogg's death, he was accused of selling prescriptions for cocaine and morphine, for the equivalent of about $12 each in today's money. Kellogg died in his sleep of heart disease, in his Homer Block apartment, on Oct. 8, 1915.