100 years ago

One curious effect of the war had been to stop entirely the supply of European leeches, which at one time had been the doctor’s staple remedy, and currently were still used to some extent by the profession.

At one time leeches had principally been got in the Landes district of Bordeaux, but of late years they had all come from Hungary. Like many old-fashioned remedies, leeches were currently coming more into use, and the difficulty had arisen of getting a supply. Largely through the instrumentality of Professor Shipley, of Cambridge, a supply had been obtained from India, and those could be seen by the curious at Messrs John Bell and Croyden’s pharmacy in Wigmore Street.

The Indian leech was sometimes a giant in size compared with the European variety. The biggest of them could stretch itself at its leisure to thirteen inches, and hold between three and four drachms of blood, and two gorgings a year was all it required in the way of sustenance.

 

50 years ago

The great North Sea oil gamble was on. The scene was thousands of square miles of grey-blue water; and the players were 23 groups of companies who hoped to find oil or natural gas.

Within the next few months, the oilmen would be moving into a 34,000-square-mile area stretching from the Thames Estuary to the North of Scotland. Giant steel drilling platforms would straddle the waves and test explosions would boom across the water. How much was it all going to cost? The 23 groups licensed by the Government to carry out exploratory drilling had agreed to spend £80m. But the total cost would be far more than that.

Because the North Sea was particularly subject to storms and rough seas, exceptionally tough and stable drilling equipment would be needed. Each unit would cost between £2m and £3m to build. To drill the deep wells - some down as far as 20,000 feet or nearly six times the height of Snowdon - would cost around £6000 per day.

 

25 years ago

New records had been established at British Sugar in York during the beet crop processing season which had just ended. Working round the clock seven days a week for 121 days, the factory produced more than 105,000 tonnes of sugar and 56,000 tonnes of animal feed pellets.

This compared with 103,500 tonnes of sugar for the previous season. New sugar production and low energy usage records were set, reflecting the massive recent investments made in new plant at the Boroughbridge Road factory. During the summer a million pounds worth of new equipment had been installed at the York plant as part of a £40 million nationwide programme by Peterborough-based British Sugar.