Explanation Of Sales Of “Health” Magazine

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31058, 13 May 1966, Page 14

Explanation Of Sales Of “Health” Magazine

A house-to-house salesman, offering a magazine called “Health,” had purported to be a Health Department inspector, and claimed that the magazine was a departmental publication, said the department’s supervising inspector (Mr J. B. Snoad) yesterday. Mr Snoad said the department issued it’s own journal, “Health” free. He believed the “Health” being offered in door-to-door sales was an Australian publication. “We have had several telephone calls from people living in the city area, questioning the salesman’s activities,” said Mr Snoad. “In one case, the man tried to get into a house. In another, he was reported as wearing a badge worded ‘Health.’ We have told the complainants that the department has no connexion with the magazine, that if the man is a genuine health inspector he should be asked to pro duce his warrant, and that if he fails to do so, the best thing to do is ring the police." The manager of the book and Bible section of the home health education service, a Seventh-Day Adventist organisation (Mr I. W. Petrie) said persons representing the organisation went from door to door selling a magazine called “Health” and other “educational literature.” “This ‘Health’ magazine is a "bi-monthly publication printed in Australia, and has been published by our own publishing house in Victoria for about 30 years,” Mr Petrie said. “It is a periodical of high standard and good repute, and its articles are read widely throughout New Zealand and Australia. “When a person comes to

the door and says he represents the home health educatio nservice it’s very easy to assume he is from the Health Department. “In the past when these incidents have occurred we have returned to the householder to find out the problem and it has been found that it is just a misunderstanding by a person who thinks we are from the Health Department.” Quite often people had a prejudice against the SeventhDay Adventist Church, he said. “A person may want to cause a bit of trouble. But we’ve found in the main that it’s just a misunderstanding,”