232 '; .; METEOKOLOGIOAL KEPORT, 1868, 



North Bhields. — A very remarkable and violent outbreak of 

 feverj:.of' a typhoid character, occurred in North Shields about 

 October the 15th, and was very severe by the 17th or 18th. 

 The fever was very local. The whole of the affected district 

 was in the higher part of the town, very much above the sea or 

 river level. The cause does not seem far to find. The table of 

 rainfall will give the key by which it may be discovered. A very 

 long period of drought was followed by sudden falls of heavy 

 rain. On September the 25th there was a fall of nearly an inch 

 (0-96), and again another fall of nearly three-quarters of an inch 

 on October the 8rd ; and, as Dr. Bramwell well remarks in a 

 paper read before the Northumberland and Durham Medical 

 Society — "To these falls acting on ground unmoistened for 

 months, and passing through imperfectly sluiced drains, rousing 

 into an active state the excrementitious matters lodging on the 

 ground the outbreak is to be ascribed." The period between 

 the heavy rainfall and the outbreak of the fever would "just 

 leave the necessary time for these putrefactive matters, thus 

 roused into activity, to be carried into the human frame and 

 generate the fever, very possibly the drain poison acting more 

 especially on those persons drinking water to some extent con- 

 taminated." It should be added, that from local circumstances 

 the drains in the lowest parts of the town, where the fever did 

 not prevail, would always have a larger flow of water through 

 them than those in the high level districts. This will serve to 

 illustrate one of the uses of meteorological observations. A care- 

 ful study of the rainfall returns will enable the local authorities 

 to guard against a similar calamity for the future, at any rate to 

 a great extent, by ascertaining when it becomes necessary to 

 force a supply of water through the sewers over and beyond that 

 provided in ordinary times. Independently of the suffering oc- 

 casioned to those who survived the attacks of the fever, probably 

 nearly sixty persons died from that cause from the commence- 

 ment of the outbreak up to the end of the first week in December. 



Aurora were seen at Wallington on the 19th ; at By well on 

 the 19th, 21st, and 22nd ; at Alston on the 22nd ; at Seaham 



