I remeber watching an old war movie (WWII or Korea) and during the surgery scene it struck me that nobody was wearing gloves. When did doctors and nurses start using gloves in surgery and for examinations? I imagine things were more lax pre-AIDS. Did latex (or something similiar) gloves even exist during the 1940s/50s? When did they stop using reusable needles? Was it before the AIDs crisis or because of it?
I’m old enough to answer at least part of the question, by cracky!
If you look at non-war movies from the 50s, you’ll see surgeons, at least, wearing gloves (leading to that cinematic cliche, the surgeon snapping off his gloves and tossing them on the floor when the patient died). They had rubber gloves earlier, but they were pretty thick, and surgeons felt clumsy in them.
In my own experience, dermatologists came next. They wore gloves during an exam at least until they established that nasty rash was simple dermatitis, not something contagious.
When I worked in a hospital around 1970, we only wore gloves for invasive procedures (that was for the patient’s protection) and with patients who were suspected or known to have an infectious disease.
If I recall correctly, gloves weren’t used for routine examinations until the late 1980s - early 1990s.
I remember disposable needles from the mass polio inoculations in the early 1960s. Can anyone go back further?
William Halsted, the famous surgeon and drug addict, pioneered the use of surgical gloves at The Johns Hopkins Hospital in the 1890’s. He did it to spare his OR nurse (who was also his wife) from nasty, scaly hands.
As for phasing out reusable needles, lots of clinics around the world still re-use them. But by the 70’s mass-produced single use needles and syringes were making headway in the US.
I’ve read that latex gloves weren’t worn all the time until HIV/AIDS emerged. After it did, the use of latex gloves greatly increased, and many more people consequently developed latex allergies. Not only was exposure increased, but the increased demand for latex resulted in the use of latex from poorly-regulated manufacturers that did not carefully remove the proteins (the source of allergy) from the latex.
Latex allergies became especially common among health-care workers, and so latex has been mostly replaced by less allergenic materials in hospitals, such as ‘nitrile’ and poly(vinyl chloride). Vinyl gloves are (IMO, anyway) annoying and uncomfortable and feel like they’d be appropriate for a cafeteria but not for science or medicine. Nitrile gloves (the blue ones) are comfortable and easy to put on and take off – they’re superior to latex gloves, even, though more expensive.
I’m not exactly sure when chemists started wearing gloves; one would think that they always have, but I’ve seen films, even from the 50s, where they don’t. This hurts to watch, almost as much as seeing people without safety glasses. Normally, nitrile gloves are used now. Latex gloves are used where cost is a concern. Reusable dishwashing gloves (which are latex) are also used often. According to one of my lab instructors, certain chemicals (examples were not given) can make latex gloves fuse with the skin. “Latex gloves are great if you’re making sandwiches, but not in a lab.”
Haven’t heard about latex gloves fusing with skin, but some deadly chemicals can permeate latex gloves.
Reported.