Surgery

Gloves, box

Transparent box, around 1920

One of today's obvious aseptic measures when dealing with patients is the days of sterile gloves.

The great American surgeon William Stewart HALSTED (1852-1922) introduced the method in Baltimore in 1889 at the newly opened John Hopkins' Hospital when his fiancé, the nurse's sister, developed a hypersensitivity to phenol, then common hand sanitizer. (Halsted and Caroline Hampton (1861-1922), by the way, married in June 1890). HALSTED had probably adopted the idea from the pathologists of the house:

Actually, 132 years previously in 1767, Obstetric gloves made from sheep intestines were used for vaginal exams and deliveries by a German physician, JJ Walbaum. and Dr. William WELCH at Hopkins may have used gloves for autopsies. "(Robert S. Lathan, Rubber gloves redux, Proc (Bayl Univ Med Cent.). 2011 Oct; 24 (4): 324).

So the rubber gloves came from "good old Europe" and were first worn by the physician and animal groomer Johann Julius WALBAUM (1724-1799) from Wolfenbüttel. In Baltimore, they were initially a purely private event. They became public subjects only in 1896, when she asked the 1870 Assistant to HALSTED at the John Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore set surgeon Joseph Colt BLOODGOOD (1867-1935) first for the entire team of surgeons, then for all surgeons in the United States.

To the exhibit

Presented is a plastic box for storing rubber gloves owned by the physician Paul HETTO, who settled in 1923 in Diekirch. In order to establish and maintain the sterility, a (black) DESNOS container is incorporated in both the base and the (identical) lid, reminiscent of the urologist-used stopper with which the catheter container was sealed (see the chapter on urology).