Rubber and gutta-percha are not the same substance by any means. Both of them are made of the milky juice of trees, but of entirely different trees.
The gutta-percha milk is collected in an absurdly wasteful manner, namely, by cutting down the trees and scraping up the juice. When this juice reaches the market, it is in large reddish lumps which look like cork and smell like cheese. It has to be cleaned, passed through a machine that tears it into bits, then between rollers before it is ready to be manufactured. It is not elastic like rubber; it may be stretched; but it will not snap back again as rubber does. It is a remarkably good nonconductor of electricity, and therefore it has been generally used to protect ocean cables, though recently rubber has been taking its place. It makes particularly excellent casts, for when it is warm it is not sticky, but softens so perfectly that it will show the tiniest indentation of a mould. It is the best kind of splint for a broken bone. If a boy breaks his arm, a surgeon can put a piece of gutta-percha into hot water, set the bone, bind on the softened gutta-percha for a splint, and in a few minutes it will be moulded to the exact shape of the arm, but so stiff as to keep the bone in place. Another good service which gutta-percha renders to the physician results from its willingness to dissolve in chloroform. If the skin is torn off, leaving a raw surface, this dissolved gutta-percha can be poured over it, and soon it is protected by an artificial skin which keeps the air from the raw flesh and gives the real skin an opportunity to grow again.
III
"KID" GLOVES
There is an old proverb which says, "For a good glove, Spain must dress the leather, France must cut it, and England must sew it." Many pairs of most excellent gloves have never seen any one of these countries, but the moral of the proverb remains, namely, that it takes considerable work and care to make a really good glove.
The first gloves made in the United States were of thick buckskin, for there was much heavy work to be done in the forest and on the land. The skin was tanned in Indian fashion, by rubbing into the flesh side the brains of the deer—though how the Indians ever thought of using them is a mystery. Later, the white folk tried to tan with pigs' brains; but however valuable the brains of a pig may be to himself, they do not contain the properties of soda ash which made those of the deer useful for this purpose.
CUTTING HIDES INTO GLOVES
The hides are kept in racks, and before cutting are stretched by hand. Then the steel die cuts out the shape of the glove. Notice the curiously shaped cut for the thumb.