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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Enemies of Books by William Blades: a little hydrochloric or oxalic acid, or caustic potash may be put
in the water, according as the stains are from grease or from ink.
Here is where an unpractised binder will probably injure a book for life.
If the chemicals are too strong, or the sheets remain too long in
the bath, or are not thoroughly cleansed from the bleach before they
are re-sized, the certain seeds of decay are planted in the paper,
and although for a time the leaves may look bright to the eye,
and even crackle under the hand like the soundest paper,
yet in the course of a few years the enemy will appear, the fibre
will decay, and the existence of the books will terminate in a state
of white tinder.
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