Text written in Basque and translated automatically by Elia without any subsequent editing. SEE ORIGINAL

By the nurse's hands

Caroline Hampton couldn't do it anymore. He loved his job very much, but he could not bear the pain of his hands and forearms. These antiseptics, which they had to use every day to disinfect their hands before entering the operating room, were too hard for their skin. He had eruptions and eczema, his skin was falling.

Hampton was a young nurse. Four years earlier, in 1885, in defiance of his family's plans, he entered the nursing school in New York. when Johns Hopkins Hospital opened in Baltimore in 1889, he joined the team of the famous surgeon William Halsted. He immediately saw Hampton's gifts and appointed her chief nurse.

Halsted wasn't anyone. He had the reputation of being one of the best surgeons of the time. The first blood transfusion in the United States was made by him in 1880. When she went to see her sister, who had just given birth, she found her dying, losing too much blood. He took his blood and put it in his sister, who then saved his life by performing an operation. A couple of years later, he performed another operation on his mother, who was affected by the gallbladder and had her gallbladder torn from her kitchen table at two o'clock in the morning, filled with seven stones. It was also one of the first interventions to remove the gallbladder.

He developed innovative procedures for operations on thyroid glands, blood vessels and hernias. And, above all, he became known for performing the first radical mastectomies to treat breast cancer. He was also a pioneer in the adoption of strict aseptic measures for interventions. Everyone who entered his operating room had to wash their hands first with soap and then with potassium permanganate, phenol and mercury chloride.

This chemical attack destroyed harmful microorganisms, of course, but also skin cells. Nurse Hampton was having a particularly hard time. And he told Halsted of his intention to quit his job. He was worried, he didn’t want that to happen. She was a very smart and competent nurse; in Halsted’s own words, “that woman was more efficient than usual.” He would really like it and would do what he could to keep working.

The first thing that occurred to him was to protect his hands with a substance called colloids, a thick liquid similar to gelatin made of nitrocellulose that hardened when dried. But it didn’t go well; when he folded his fingers, he cracked.

Then it occurred to them that the solution could be some gloves. He made gypsum molds of Hampton's hands and sent them to the Goodyear Rubber Company. He asked them to make two pairs of rubber gloves, long, thin and flexible.

Yes, those gloves served their purpose perfectly. Hampton’s hands quickly recovered and he was able to continue his work. But not for a long time. In the same year he married Halsted, who, due to the expectations of the time, had to leave his job to be a housewife.

The gloves made the journey longer. In fact, when they saw that the gloves were so good, Halsted immediately ordered more. And soon, most nurses and assistants started wearing gloves. In addition to the non-calcining of the skin with antiseptics, it was found that the sliding of surgical instruments was less. “The assistants got so used to working with gloves that they continued to use them as surgeons and realized that they were more skillful with gloves than naked hands,” Halsted wrote.

“He found that with gloves, patients had fewer post-surgical infections.”

in 1893, Joseph Bloodgood, a student at Halsted, began using gloves to perform hernia operations. And he found that patients had fewer post-surgical infections. When he collected the data, he saw that the difference was large: in 220 operations performed without gloves, 38 patients had infections; and in 226 operations performed with gloves, only 4. That is, the infection rate decreased from 17% to 2% due to the use of gloves.

Bloodgood published this discovery in 1899, a discovery that was initially ignored by few and received numerous disdain. At that time, the use of antisepsis was still not widespread at all, and many doctors looked at this kind of progress with skepticism or even bad eyes. The strongest argument against gloves was that surgeons would lose the sensitivity of their fingers, essential to distinguish organs and tissues by touch.

in the 1920s and 1930s, many surgeons still performed operations with empty hands. But over time, the data showed that infections were far more dangerous than mistakes that could be made due to lack of sensitivity. The use of gloves was gradually extended until it became an essential part of the surgery. Since then, surgical gloves have saved many lives and have also spread to many other areas outside the operating rooms.

Halsted made many important contributions to surgical techniques as well as medical training. But his greatest contribution, the most revolutionary, was made almost unintentionally, thanks to Hampton and Bloodgood. In that case, Halsted did not conduct experimental research, collect data, or invent protocols. I just wanted to protect a nurse's skin.