Paramount in importance to the appearance of boots or shoes on the wearer is the desideratum, not only of having them so made as to ensure personal comfort in walking, but additionally to have them so constructed as to protect the feet from wet during damp and rainy weather. The evils arising from getting the feet damp cannot be overstated; amongst them are to be included—cold, cough, bronchitis, inflammation of the lungs, and rheumatism. In those inheriting a constitutional consumptive taint, a cold caught from wearing damp or leaky boots has very frequently been known to have precipitated the disease, that has ended in more or less speedy death. Hence arises not only the duty of changing damp boots or shoes as soon as ever the opportunity offers, but the wisdom of adopting the preventive precaution of wearing them of such stout construction as to be impervious to water during rainy weather. If the dangers arising from a neglect of this advice are visited with such serious consequences upon adults and grown persons, they affect infants and children with even far greater intensity, because of the much more tender and sensitive
organisation of the latter. It therefore behoves every mother not only to see that her children are shod with good thick boots or shoes, but to take especial care that whenever these are damp they are removed at once.
Mr Chavasse, in his excellent work, ‘Counsel to a Mother,’ recommends “boots for walking out of doors and shoes for the house.” He adds, “that the constant wearing of boots in the house is weakening to the ankles, as weakening as tight lacing is to the waist; indeed it acts much in the same way, namely, by wasting away, by pressure, the ligaments of the ankles, as stays waste away the muscles of the waist.” In support of his argument he quotes Dr Humphrey, who says, “The notion is in both instances fortified by the fact that those persons who have been accustomed to the pressure either upon the ankle or upon the waist, feel a want of it when it is removed, and are uncomfortable without it. They forget, or are unconscious, that the feeling of the want has been engendered by the appliance, and that had they never resorted to the latter, they would never have experienced the former. The deduction to be drawn from Dr Hutchinson’s opinion is that no more fertile source of weak ankles exists than that of wearing laced boots during childhood. Boots with elastic sides, as exerting much more equal pressure, and allowing full scope for the ankles to play, are far preferable to tightly laced-up boots.
BOOT-POW′DER. French chalk reduced to powder by scraping or grating. Used to facilitate the ‘getting on’ of new or tight boots, a little of it being rubbed on the insides of the backs, heels, and insteps.
BOOT-TOP LIQ′UID. Syn. Boot′-top composi′′tion. There are numerous articles of this class extant, but, with few exceptions, they are most unchemical mixtures, not infrequently containing ingredients which are either unnecessary, or opposed to the action of the rest. The following are examples:—
Prep. a. White-top:—1. Oxalic acid and white vitriol, of each 1 oz.; water, 11⁄2 pint; dissolve. It is applied with a sponge, the leather having been previously washed with water; after a short time it is washed off with water, when the boot-tops are either dried in a current of air or by a gentle heat; they are lastly either polished with a brush, so as to appear like new leather, or they are left rough, as the case may require.
2. Sour milk, 1 quart; butter of antimony, cream of tartar, tartaric acid, and burnt alum, of each 2 oz.; mix.
3. Sour milk (skimmed), 3 pints; cream of tartar, 2 oz.; alum and oxalic acid, of each 1 oz.
4. Alum, cream of tartar, magnesia, and oxalic acid, of each 1 oz.; salt of sorrel and sugar lead, of each 1⁄4 oz.; water, 1 quart. The preceding are for white tops.
b. Brown-top:—Alum, annatto, and oxalic acid, of each 1 oz.; isinglass and sugar of lead, of each 1⁄2 oz.; salt of sorrel, 1⁄4 oz.; water, 1 quart; boil for 10 minutes.