At Palmer College of Chiropractic, book spine poetry takes on added meaning. The example pictured here to celebrate National Poetry Month features just a few of the thousands of volumes housed in Special Collections and Archives. For those new to the genre, book spine poetry is, according to the American Library Association (ALA), “a poem composed using the spines of books stacked on one another to create a free verse poem.” Thus, through adept spinal adjustment, we have:

How To Get Well

Old Dad Chiro
B.J. of Davenport
Three Generations
The Palmer Technique of Chiropractic
Chiropractic History

The ALA is currently sponsoring a book spine poetry contest, and voting for favorite poems will remain open through April 26; all submissions can be viewed here.

Palmer Library contains a variety of poetic works, and Special Collections and Archives has several volumes that relate to chiropractic, such as Twentieth Century Zephyrs; or Reminiscences of Chiropractic (1916), Paths around Palmer (1958), and Chiropractic in Four Seasons (1998). In addition, we have the volume, P.S.C. and Other Poems, by William H. Rauchfuss, D.C. Valedictorian of his class, Rauchfuss hailed from Paterson, New Jersey, and graduated from Palmer in 1920. Modestly produced with typewritten carbon-copies, the book contains such gems as “Frat Yells” and “Sorority Yells,” which conclude with the following stanzas, respectively:

Ye-ow! Ye-ow! me-oh-my!
Delta Sigma Chi! Yi-yi!
Chiro! chiro! absolute-lee!
We yell like hell for the P.S.C.!

Yip, yap! Mabel! B.J.!
Yip-de-addity, boom-de-aye!
Sublux! Palpate! this is our cry—
We are the gals of the Delta Phi Chi!

With spring finally arriving in Iowa, may everyone enjoy such exuberance and perhaps add their own versifying—chiropractic or otherwise—to the literary canon.

Continuing with the Women’s History Month celebrations, we of course need to highlight Mabel H. Palmer, D.C., Ph.C., an anatomist and foremost woman chiropractor who is much heralded in the chiropractic field.  She was a leader and inspiration to female chiropractors, successfully combining her role as wife and mother with teaching at Palmer for over four decades.

Mabel founded the oldest chiropractic organization in the world, the Sigma Phi Chi Sorority, and authored the first chiropractic anatomy textbook, Anatomy (1918). Her influence is also evident by her pamphlet, “A Woman’s Appeal to Women,” which was published in the early 1920s and is available in Palmer’s Special Collections and Archives.

In this pamphlet Mabel encourages women to consider a career in chiropractic. She states, “Never before has there been such wonderful opportunities to women for practical service; and in my opinion, there is no other profession in the whole world so splendidly adapted to women as CHIROPRACTIC.” She asks women to “think of the children” and to tap into their “feminine qualities of patience and sympathy” in order to help the ailing and ultimately “to grow intellectually, socially and financially.”

The Appeal also states emphatically that “The World Needs Thousands of Women Chiropractors,” and Mabel’s own example contributed greatly to the influx of women at Palmer and in the wider chiropractic profession. Palmer has been very active in recruiting women over the years and has continued to graduate many female chiropractors in each successive class. To read further about Mabel’s influence on women in the chiropractic field, visit the library to consult “The First 100 Years of Women in Chiropractic” in Today’s Chiropractic (vol. 24, no. 1, 1995) and “Women in Chiropractic: The Past and the Present” in the ICA Review (vol. 52, no. 4, 1996).   —Rosemary Riess

In order to celebrate International Women’s Day, which occurs every March 8th during Women’s History Month, we would like to highlight a selection of international women who have studied at Palmer and who have contributed significantly to the successful establishment and promotion of chiropractic around the world.

In 1904, Mrs. Barbara Brake from Melbourne, Australia travelled to Davenport with her sister-in-law, Martha Brake Thompson, to obtain D.D. Palmer’s help in relieving the pain of her congenitally dislocated hips. They stayed in Davenport  to study chiropractic, and then returned to Melbourne and established their own practices. Mrs. Barbara Brake is believed to be the first chiropractic patient and practitioner from Australia. Other Australian women soon followed suit, with Helen McKenzie being the first Australian chiropractic graduate, completing her studies at Palmer in 1923. She is pictured here in an advertisement for her practice that appeared in The Chiropractor, May 1931.

Marjaleena Mäkinen was born in 1940 in Pori, Finland. She travelled to Norway seeking relief from bad asthma and discovered chiropractic. She was inspired to study chiropractic herself, graduating from Palmer College of Chiropractic in March 1968. After she graduated from Palmer she returned to Finland to start her own practice but was challenged by the National Board of Health (NBH), who suggested that she return to the U.S. Not to be deterred, Mäkinen hired a lawyer and was able to open her own chiropractic practice in May 1969 in her hometown of Pori, and despite further confrontation, the practice still survives today as the oldest chiropractic clinic in Finland. To learn more about Mäkinen or other European women of chiropractic, check out Chiropractic in Europe: An Illustrated History, which is available both in Special Collections and in the circulating collection of the Library.       —Rosemary Riess

With African American History Month coming to a close, it is important to reflect on some of the adversity faced by African American chiropractors and gains made in chiropractic history. The story of Harvey Lillard, the first chiropractic patient, is a familiar one both at Palmer and in the wider world of chiropractic. Although African Americans have been part of chiropractic from its inception, when D.D. Palmer made his first chiropractic adjustment of Lillard in 1895, the path for race equality in chiropractic has been one of struggle. One major landmark of African American chiropractic history is evidenced in the First Annual Catalogue of the Rubel College of Chiropractic Inc., 1922-1923.

The Rubel College of Chiropractic, which the catalogue calls the “first chiropractic school of the race,” was incorporated in 1914 in Alabama, and in 1921 in Chicago, by Fred H. L. Rubel, D.C. (pictured above). The college was created “to open the field of instruction to all races, no matter what the color of their skin may be, so as particularly to give members of the colored race an opportunity to learn one of the greatest modern professions—Chiropractic.”  Dr. Rubel was joined in his work by Julian Dawson, M.D., who was an instructor of Anatomy and other subjects at the college. More on the background of Dr. Rubel can be found in the article, “Fred Rubel: The First Black Chiropractor?” published in Chiropractic History (vol. 11, no. 1, June 1991, pp. 8-9). Both the original Rubel College catalogue and the corresponding Chiropractic History article can be viewed in Special Collections and Archives at the David D. Palmer Health Sciences Library. Reading Room hours are 8:30am-4pm, Monday-Friday.     —Rosemary Riess

A pioneering work on the functioning of the human heart is, of course, William Harvey’s On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals [Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus], in which he famously observed in 1628:

. . . it is absolutely necessary to conclude that the blood in the animal body is impelled in a circle, and is in a state of ceaseless motion; that this is the act or function which the heart performs by means of its pulse; and that it is the sole and only end of the motion and contraction of the heart.”

– Chapter 14, “Conclusion of the Demonstration of Circulation” (translated by Robert Willis).

The device pictured here, a Cardiac Display Unit manufactured by Bobbitt Laboratories, was donated to the library in 1978 for use in demonstrating the flow of blood through the heart by means of flashing lights.

Anatomical models have long played a role in the teaching of human anatomy. Dr. Louis Thomas Jérôme Auzoux (1797-1880) designed and fabricated many such tools in the nineteenth century. As cultural, legal, and environmental concerns limited the efficacy of using cadavers for instruction, Auzoux pioneered the development of papier-mâché anatomical models, which were employed to represent the structures of humans, as well as animals and plants. For those interested in learning more, the Smithsonian Institution’s online exhibition, Artificial Anatomy: Papier-Mâché Anatomical Models, is highly recommended.

Palmer College of Chiropractic’s own Dr. Mabel Palmer authored the first anatomical text in chiropractic, Anatomy, published in 1918. The Library also has numerous works on cardiology, some of which can be browsed here.

I recently started as a new Library Assistant at the Palmer Library in the Special Collections and Archives department. My name is Rosemary Riess. Most people call me Rosemary, unless they know me well then they call me Rosie. I am originally from Leeds, West Yorkshire in England but I have lived in the Quad Cities for five years. I graduated from The University of Iowa in May with my Master’s in Library and Information Science.

While at The University of Iowa, I researched the importance of the paperback revolution to scholars and the history of 1950s Science Fiction magazine readership as part of an early form of fan culture.  I worked as an Archivist Assistant for two years at the Iowa Women’s Archives and the Boyd Law Library. Some of my responsibilities included processing new collections, writing finding aids, reference requests, working with Archon database software and working on exhibits. This is the type of work which I will continue in the Palmer Library Special Collections and Archives as well as digitization projects and updating the blog. My professional goal is to make historical archives more accessible to the community.

Before my graduate degree, I worked at the Figge Art Museum for several years both in the curatorial and visitor services departments where I worked on exhibits, updated the Artsystems database and assisted visitors with their information requests. My undergraduate degree, a B.A. in American Studies from the University of Hull, England, gave me a good background in a variety of different cultural fields from literature and history to art and film. As part of this degree, I spent a year abroad at the University of Iowa where I met my husband, Tim Riess, who was an electrical engineering student at the time. After we got married, I moved to Davenport, IA where I currently reside with Tim and my mischievous rabbit, Charlie. My hobbies include reading British science fiction and mystery novels and painting.