The thought of performing surgery without wearing gloves, in modern medicine, is unthinkable. Surgical gloves help prevent the transmission of infection in operating theatres, and protect the surgeon. This was, however, not always the case, and before the late 1800s, no surgeon wore gloves.

According to hopkinsmedicine.org, William Stewart Halsted, The Johns Hopkins Hospital’s first surgeon in chief, is widely credited as the first to develop and introduce rubber surgical gloves in the United States. That was in 1894, five years after the institution opened.

Halsted is reported to have developed the latex glove to protect the hands of his scrub nurse, Caroline Hampton, from the harsh antiseptics in widespread use as disinfectants. Halsted used a combination of carbolic acid and mercuric chloride as a disinfectant during his surgical procedures. Hampton would have to handle these chemicals regularly, and as a consequence, she developed severe contact dermatitis on her hands. Halsted could not bear to see her go through this and reached out to the Goodyear Rubber Company to create a rubber glove that she could wear during surgery to protect her hands. This is according to pastmedicalhistory.co.uk.

By 1966, disposable latex gloves were the norm in operating rooms nationwide, and in the 1980s, the need for "universal precautions”, prompted by the AIDS epidemic, increased their use outside the operating room and among healthcare workers everywhere. 

By the early 1900s, all surgeons were wearing sterile rubber gloves. The first disposable latex medical gloves were manufactured in 1964 by the Ansell Rubber Company. These gloves were sterilised using gamma irradiation and were then disposed of following surgery. Disposable surgical gloves are now the standard in the operating room and many surgeons ‘double glove’ when performing procedures to reduce the danger of infection from glove failure or puncture.

As glove use proliferated, however, so did the rate of allergic reactions, and by the mid-1990s, latex allergies were considered a major health issue. 

Talcum powder was introduced to make the donning of gloves easier, but over recent years, evidence has arisen that this is linked to the development of post-operative scars and inflammation. In December 2016, the use of powdered gloves was banned.

Another recent development is the introduction of non-latex gloves. The constant wearing of latex gloves has led to an increasing rate of latex allergy in both medical professionals and patients, and gloves made of non-latex materials, such as polyvinyl chloride and neoprene have become widely used.