The Sentinel=record., 1912-06-23
A SUGGESTION.
PhSsiclan Urges the Necessity of
 Making Our Visitors Our Boosters.

Making Our Visitors Our Boosters.
 We have another assessment com mittee visiting us to raise money TOT the State Fair We usually have an assessment committee of one kind r another out raising money for some form of advertisement, which Is as it should be. We should do everything legitimate to get the people to come here and give Hot Springs a trial, and that takes money. The second, and most substantial, form of adver- tisement is to give satisfaction to those who do come here, and tha. doesn't cost an extra cent.
 Hot Springs is, and must be, ad ycrtised as health resort, conse : qrently it caters to sick people for it's principal patronage
 How do we take care of these sick people? They are met on the train and warned about everything in Hot Springs which gives them q false idea of the place before they ever see it. They are put on thssr gr ard, not only against drumming v tcrs and hotels, but against all doctors and hotels. They are psychologicaliy infected with mistrust of everything and everybody. which puts them and all who care for them at a disadvant age.
 They are told that they can obtain i bath directions at the surerintend ent's office, and great many of them are under the impression that they have to get such permits there. The government examination consists oi | two questions--"What is your name Have you a doctor?" If the patient answers that he has no doctor he is given bath permit which allows hiul to take the same bath for rheuma tism that he would for heart failnre and vice versa. The consequence is that a great many people are not benefited as much as they should te u great many more are not benefited at all and some are actually injufed by the baths.
 One man who has been to Hot Springs, and been benefited, is bet ter booster than 9 hundred whe have only read about us in onr advertising literature, and a man who comes here and Is not benefited is an undying knock
 A course of treatment at Ho. Springs, to the ordinary man, means 21 baths regardless of how taken, and when man says he has been to this city and taken the baths with cut having received any benefit. peo- pie do not stop to ask him whether he was treated here by a physician or whether he was dipped" by the government.
 We are wasting thousands of dUl- lars every year by bringing people here and then not benefiting them when they are subject to benefit f treated properly It is not quest In Of the physician alone, but applies equally to the business man.
 "Sick people are the physicians living, but they are also the only crop that Hot Springs has which is able to support 1t.
 Some businesses depend on new customers entirely and do not expect 10 see old ones come back, but that it not good business The way to do is to get all the new ones you can and keep the old ones satisfied We are now depending on new ones that are brought here through our advertise ments. and the more people who arc allowed to take baths here without a thorough examination by a competent physician the fewer walking, free ad- vertisements we will have
 "The free bath permits and the man who meets the trains are a failure as drumming, which they were sup posed to overcome. is as bad as ever, and 1t is every business mans busi- ness to try and get these rules dis continued so that the patients will have the best chance to be benefited.
 Every competent physician in this city, no matter how selfish he may be, has to work for Hot Springs in work- ing for himself. and he Is the one and the only one who is in position to make the advertisements which Hot Springs sends out pay. Consequently he is entitled to your support.
 'E. D. HOLLAD."