The Ocala evening star. [volume] (Ocala, Fla.) 1895-1943, 1914-06-09
PUBLICITY PREVENTS PANIC

One of the Stars good friends
an eminent physician gave it bless
Ing out the other day because, like
most other papers, when anybody OF
Its acquaintance is sick, or is recov-
ering from an illness, it makes note
OF the fact.
1t gives people a false impression
of the health of the town. said he
Anybody in another town or an
other state, especially at the sickly
season OF the year, or the season that
people not acquainted with Florida
believe to be sickly, reading items to
the effect that people in Ocala are
sick, or have been sick, jump to the
conclusion that they are or have been
sick with fever, or some other dread
ed disease, and form an opinion of
the health of the town accordingly.
You shouldn't he went on. lever
report anybody as being sick Their
friends all know when they are sick,
and when they recover; it isn't any
body else's business, and it not only
gives false impression of the health
of the town to people at a distance,
but it alarms many timid and excita-
BILE people in the city"
There is much merit in what the
gentleman says, and il the practice
could become universal we would be
heartily in favor of it. It's a beau
tiful theory to strictly avoid spread
ing the report of anything harmful,
and if it could be extended to in
clude error and crime as we'll as dis
ease, We would gladly do our little
part in trying to kill the weeds in
LIES garden by smothering them
with flowers. 1t would be a much
nicer world if there was no scandal,
and misfortune was only mentioned
in subdued whispers of sympathy.
but we are afraid it wouldn't
we suppressed all reports of sick
ness, about the only result would be
that we would be blamed by a great
many people for lack of interest in
them or their friends. We are also
not only afraid, but almost sure that
our readers at a distance would no.
tice after awhile that we never re-
ported anybody sick, and with the
.ueral perversity of human nature
would say, There must be an cpl
demic in Ocala,
For such is uhayoidably the result
of trying to suppress ill report.
Years ago, the writer dweit awhile
in a city in which there We're many
cases of smallpox, then a much more
feared and misunderstood disease
than now The city was a place OF
some fifteen thousand people-there
were perhaps fifty or sixty cases of
smallpox, about twenty of which
were fatal.
The newspapers of the city Ia
booed the word smallpox They
never let on that there was such a
thing Their silence on the subject
was so dense that it could be cut
with a knife.
But everybody in that city shud-
fdered with dread of the disease, and
! almost everybody in hundreds OF
miles of the town believed it was
scourged with an epidemic of the
plague. The newspapers in nearly
= cities told of it; it was common talk
on all the trains in and out OF the
xDNn; people didn't go there unless
they had to; people from there were
watched with unfriendly interest
some of the smaller towns quaran-
tined against it; and even in the lit
tie mountain valleys for a couple oil
hundred miles everybody was on the
lookout for strangers and, contra ~
to their usual hospitality shut their
doors against many unlucky travel
-ers whom they suspected of fleeing
from the afflicted city.
The worst element of this partic
u1ar case was the exaggeration. The
least of the reports circulated was
that the disease was ten times a.
bad as it really was. According tt
most of the rumors there were hun
11reds of cases of the disease, an6
people were dying of it in the streets
The Star is very conservative O
its reports of sickness. In most o
them, it puts of saying people hav'
been sick till it can say they are con
walescent It never reports a cas-
af contagious disease without per
mission of the board of health. an,
hopeless except at the last and the