The surgeon William Halsted was an early American adopter of Joseph Lister's antiseptic techniques. When the chief scrub nurse at Johns Hopkins Hospital began complaining of dermatitis from mercuric chloride in 1890, Halsted approached the newly formed Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company in Ohio and persuaded them to make thin rubber gloves for her. These proved so successful that other surgical staff began wearing them as well. 1 The operating surgeons found them fairly cumbersome, but in 1899, Halsted's assistant, Joseph Bloodgood, reported a significant Cover photo World War I operating theatre in H.M.S. Burbis. Credit: Wellcome Collection. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).