This appeared to really solve the problem, and he made some
beautiful goods. At once it was noised abroad that India rubber had
been so treated that it lost its stickiness, and he received medals
and testimonials and seemed on the high road to success, till one day
he noticed that a drop of weak acid, falling on the cloth, neutralized
the alkali, and immediately the rubber was soft again. To see this,
with his knowledge of what rubber should do, proved to him at once
that his process was not a successful one. He therefore continued
experimenting, and after preparing his mixtures in his attic in New
York, would walk three miles to the mill of a Mr. Pike, at Greenwich
village, and there try various experiments.
In the line of these, he discovered that rubber, dipped in nitric
acid, formed a surface cure, and he made a great many goods with this
acid cure which were spoken of, and which even received a letter of
commendation from Andrew Jackson.
The constant and varied experiments that Goodyear went through with
affected his health more or less, and at one time he came very near
being suffocated by gas generated in his laboratory. That he did not
die then everybody knows, but he was thrown then into a fever by the
accident and came very near losing his life.
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