IAGenWeb Project - Allamakee co. Misc. Historical Items


Bakkum Chiropractic Clinic and Hospital
Waukon




Bakkum Chiropractic Clinic and Hospital
Bakkum Chiropractic Clinic and Hospital, ca 1938
~photo contributed by Gloria Payne

Bakkum Hospital (1936-1950).
The number of chiropractic facilities offering inpatient care peaked in the period between World Wars I and II. Little information is available about the vast majority of these facilities. One of them was the Bakkum Chiropractic Clinic and Hospital in Waukon, Iowa. The proprietor was Roy C. Bakkum, DC; he and his wife, Jessie H. Bakkum, DC, opened their 30-bed facility in 1936. Patients received hole-in-one chiropractic adjustments, rest, and nursing care at this facility. Dr Roy Bakkum not only envisioned chiropractors as true primary caregivers but also implemented that vision to the best of his ability. He saw chiropractic as the principal type of health care that the vast majority of people should receive, even as inpatients; instead of being the usual and customary type of hospital care, pharmaceutical and surgical intervention would be called on only as needed. Mainly because of economic pressures, the Bakkums' facility closed in 1950. The Bakkum Chiropractic Clinic and Hosptial may have been fairly typical of the small chiropractic facilities that offered in-patient care. Most of them closed in the post-World War II period, mostly due to economic difficulties. Dr. Roy Bakkum not only had the vision of chiropractors as true primary care-givers, but tried to implement that vision to the best of his ability. He saw the chiropractic adjustment as the main therapeutic intervention that the vast majority of people should receive, even as in-patients. Radical allopathic or surgical intervention would have only been called upon as needed, rather than being the usual and customary primary care that is currently the norm.

~source: PubMed; U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, National Institutes of Health www.pubmed.gov ; excerpt of the article published in Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics, Volume 24, Issue 1, Pages 34-43.

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Dr. Roy Conrad Allen Bakkum (June 10, 1903 - December 3, 1979) and his wife Dr. Jessie Hardwick (Hubbard) Bakkum (January 24, 1905 - May 10, 1984), are buried in Old West Paint Creek cemetery. They had two children, Delores Anne (Mrs. John Nolan) and Robert J. who was also a chiropractor.

~source: Allamakee County, Iowa Burial Grounds, 1845-1988, by Dale Woodmansee, 1986 and the obituary of Robert J. Bakkum.



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