The Evening Star FRIDAY, DECEMBER 1, 1876.
There are people in the world to whom “a sensation ” is everything; and who care very little for the truth or falsehood of the tales which they help to propagate, provided only that they create a public commotion, and more particularly if the said commotion is likely to bring grist to their private mill. These gentry seem to be pretty busy in Dunedin just now trying to awaken a scare in relation to the spread of scarlet fever. Doubtless a good many cases of this disease have appeared in the City lately; and when it was first introduced from Melbourne the municipal authorities were quite justified in taking the precautions which they did against its dissemination. 'J hey went far enough, and would have done exceedingly wrong to have adopted the preposterous recommendation made to them to close the public schools for a season, which would have proved a certain means of intensifying the virulence of the epidemic. As it was, the disease was nearly stamped out, when the sultry weather revived it again, although, happily, in what appears to be a less dangerous form. To these circumstances it is highly necessary *to draw public attention, and we have not neglected our own duty in this respect; but there is really nothing alarming in the present aspect of affairs, despite the gloomy colors in which sensational journalists and sensational doctors like to portray them. One would really imagine the City was plague-stricken, and that it was incumbent upon its inhabitants to clothe themselves forthwith in sackcloth and ashes ; whereas, in real truth, the deathrate is very slightly raised, and it is a perfectly natural consequence of the kind of weather we have experienced during the past few months that there should be a somewhat greater amount of sickness than usual, in whatever shape it may happen to manifest itself. Nor can it be denied that there are parts of Dunedin where dwellings have been built in defiance of all sanitary principles, and whose inhabitants require warning of the danger which they run unless they take such precautions as medical science teaches are needful in these cases for the protection of health; but warnings of this sort are a very different thing to frantic prophecies of impending woe, which frighten nervous people, and are likely to create a panic which would, of itself, predispose many persons to catch any infectious disease that might be afloat in the locality. The City Council may, however, draw the moral from its experience of scarlet fever, that it ought to apply itself diligently to the improvement of the drainage of the City. A complete system of drainage is a large work, involving financial considerations of no small magnitude; but, in the meantime, the City might be kept in a much healthier state than it is if better attention were paid to the observance of sanitary conditions in its highways and by ways.
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Evening Star, Issue 4295, 1 December 1876, Page 2
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494The Evening Star FRIDAY, DECEMBER 1, 1876. Evening Star, Issue 4295, 1 December 1876, Page 2
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