Healing the Homeless

It was almost a decade ago when Dr. Anita Morgenstern started to help the less fortunate in a very unusual way. Rather than serving up soup at the Church of St. Francis Xavier and Church of the Holy Apostles, both in Chelsea, New York, she and four chiropractic associates offer free adjustments to the hundreds of homeless in need of chiropractic care. By starting Chiropractic for Humanity, Dr. Morgenstern recognized the needs of these people, as their living conditions make aches and pains more common and more painful. “I have one patient I recently adjusted at the soup kitchen who lived in a cardboard box for six years,” Morgenstern said. “I’ve never seen a spine like his.”Over the past ten years, visiting the soup kitchens twice a week, Morgenstern has adjusted hundreds of men and women, many of whom have become common faces to Morgenstern, getting adjusted once a week. One man insists his visits to Dr. Morgenstern allow him to “maintain a sound mind and body.” (The New York Times, Schienberg, 07/22/08)