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. Lathan SR, Caroline Hampton Halsted: the first to use rubber gloves in the operating room The stethoscope began as a rolled-up sheet of paper In 1816, rather than press his ear to a young patient's chest, René Laennec rolled paper into a tube and heard her heart more clearly than ever. Roguin A, Rene Theophile Hyacinthe Laënnec (1781–1826): The man behind the stethoscope