Friday, October 2, 2009

Profile - Phyllis Markham-Richelieu

Phyllis H. Markham-Richelieu, D.C.
August 8, 1921 – November 7, 2005
Mount Horeb, WI


Phyllis Markham-Richelieu first became acquainted with Dr. Clarence S. Gonstead as a patient following a serious accident as a youth – and was immediately aware of the effective results possible through his unique application. Following this experience, Phyllis maintained an allegiance and loyalty to the principles and practice of Dr. Gonstead.

Phyllis grew up in the Dodgeville area attending public schools. She decided to attend the Madison Business College in 1940-1941. Then World War II came, and Phyllis enlisted in the United States Navy where she served three years for her country. After her honorable discharge, Phyllis enrolled at University of Wisconsin – Madison and studied liberal arts. After receiving her basic studies and at the request of Dr. Gonstead, Phyllis enrolled at Lincoln Chiropractic College. There she met her future husband, Ted Markham, and together they graduated in 1951. It was a formidable experience for them. In the years to come, their college classmates would become important allies in growing the Gonstead enterprise and method. They included: Albert Grove, Marv Klaes, Gaylord Culp and instructor Lester Cheal.

After graduation, the new chiropractic couple returned to Mount Horeb and beseeched Dr. Gonstead for work as associates. He turned them down and told them to get some “field experience” first. Meanwhile, Phyllis took post-graduate courses in Logan Basic at Lincoln that year and then post-graduate education from Palmer College. Later in 1951, the new couple started their own practice in Beaver Dam, WI. Ted took care of the practice, and Phyllis started raising their children.

Despite starting a family, Phyllis kept in regular contact with Dr. Gonstead to study his methodology. She regularly took her children to Mount Horeb to have Dr. Gonstead work on them. At the same time, she and her husband started to research Dr. Gonstead’s approach to chiropractic within their own clinic.

In 1954 at the urging of Phyllis, Dr. Gonstead began to teach “classes” to other chiropractors. At the very beginning, Phyllis acted as class secretary collecting money and taking notes. Later, she began promoting the Gonstead method through a small publication called Chiropractic Ethics and Economics.

As the Gonstead project evolved from small classes to large nation-wide seminars, Phyllis became the chief investigator for understanding Dr. Gonstead’s work while Ted and brother-in-law Lee Vogel organized and taught seminars. She worked as an unpaid volunteer until 1961, at which time, she began to receive a small salary. Her contribution to the Gonstead method is enormous. She evolved Gonstead spinography into a complete x-ray analysis and listing system that forms a basis for the recognizable system it is today.

Over the many years, Phyllis became a close confidant of Dr. Gonstead and acted as his right-hand woman while she worked at the Gonstead Clinic. When she finally left the clinic, she remained a zealous protector of the Gonstead work “ready and willing to fight for the preservation.” In the Gonstead Clinic biography of 1966, Phyllis was asked what her personal objective was. She responded, “To carry the torch of Gonstead Chiropractic to all the world.” Furthermore, it noted her strong purpose and passion for the work:

This doctor has actually dedicated her life to the furtherance of the health and well being of everyone that will seek such health through the medium of ethical chiropractic; as practiced and taught at the Gonstead Clinic.

Without selfish concern for self or family, Dr. Phyllis Markham seeks a better understanding for her profession and the proven work it can perform for the health of humanity.

Realizing the highly specialized nature of the Dr. Gonstead Method, this doctor is constantly striving for the acquisition of an ample number of trained doctors—trained in the Gonstead Concept—so that this great Truth may be perpetuated and never lost.


Ultimately, her passion cost her marriage to Ted and her quest for finding subluxations on x-rays led to an unbalanced perspective making her at odds with those that actually treated patients at the clinic. In an incident where a particular patient was not responding to care and the appropriate action was to refer to a medical doctor, Phyllis side-stepped the treating doctor's recommendation and sent the patient to Dr. Gonstead's house for a second opinion. She was fired by Alex Cox on November 1, 1969 for subordination.

In her later years, Phyllis maintained her focus and remarried. When the Gonstead Clinic was in trouble of being purchased by an outside group, she spearheaded the movement to purchase the clinic. In doing so, she moved back to Mount Horeb to be close to the place she loved. To the end, Phyllis maintained as much contact with the clinic as was possible.


- written by Matthew Amman

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