The Bakkum Chiropractic Clinic and Hospital

The number of chiropractic facilities that offered in-patient care peaked in the period between World Wars I and II. Little information is available about the vast majority of these facilities. One of these was the Bakkum Chiropractic Clinic and Hospital in Waukon, Iowa. The proprietor was Roy C. Bakkum, D.C., who along with his wife, Jessie H. Bakkum, D.C., opened this thirty bed facility in 1936. The only therapeutic intervention that the majority of patients received at this facility was hole-in-one (HIO) adjustment. Unfortunately, mainly because of economic pressures, the 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.