Surgical gloves were first made to protect a nurse's hands, not patients
In 1889, surgeon William Halsted asked Goodyear to make thin rubber gloves for his scrub nurse, whose hands were inflamed by antiseptics. A year later, he married her.
In the winter of 1889, at the newly opened Johns Hopkins Hospital, scrub nurse Caroline Hampton developed severe contact dermatitis on her hands and arms. The antiseptics of the day, mercuric chloride and carbolic acid, were more than her skin could tolerate.
Her surgeon, William Stewart Halsted, considered her too valuable to lose. He asked the Goodyear Rubber Company to make two pairs of thin rubber gloves with gauntlets as an experiment. They worked so well that more were ordered, and the assistants handling instruments soon wore them too.
The gloves were meant to protect the staff, not the patients; Halsted himself did not wear them at first. Only later did surgeons realise how much they reduced wound infections. Halsted and Caroline married in June 1890. As one of his assistants put it, Venus had come to the aid of Aesculapius.
Summary prepared with AI assistance from the published abstract and reviewed by a physician. Not medical advice. Learn more
