Rubber gloves in orthopaedic surgery (part II): Cooke and Goodyear; Halsted and Caroline's gloves of love; from cotton to rubber after Perthes' experiments; double glove technique with Urist.

Abstract

This study determines the timeline for surgeons adopting rubber gloves and the double glove technique in the operating room for orthopaedic surgery. Using the vague historical terms of discovery, acceptance, commonplace, and consistency, we analyzed the influence of the different actors in each period. Cotton or silk was used for early gloves; they were permeable, sometimes coated with paraffin. Uses of rubber date to the 1600s when the Mesoamericans used rubber to make shoes. After the discovery of rubber in 1735 by the French scientist Charles de la Condamine in Peru, the rubber glove was imagined in 1834 and done for the first time by R. F. Cooke. The acceptance of rubber gloves arrived when the Goodyear-Rubber Society began to manufacture rubber gloves. Halsted, at Johns Hopkins Hospital, negotiated in 1889 with the Goodyear Rubber Company to produce thin rubber gloves to protect his nurse's hands from the dermatologic effects of the carbolic acid used to sterilize instruments. Commonplace to protect patients from bacteria of hand surgeons necessitated several decades. Dr. Joseph Bloodgood (Halsted's senior resident) remarked that gloving the surgeon with rubber gloves reduced the infection rate. Still, surgeons were reluctant to wear gloves that impaired the sense of touch. Laboratory experiments performed by G. Perthes on cotton and rubber gloves were necessary to generalize rubber gloves for practice in orthopaedic surgery. Consistency of the double-glove technique arrived during World War II when M. Urist proposed the double protection against bites from bone or bullet fragments while exploring war wounds. Only in 1965, when The Ansell Rubber Company utilized gamma irradiation as a low-cost method of sterilizing the gloves they produced, did disposable gloves become sterile. This article helps to understand the detailed discussions before surgical gloves' modern operating equipment.