Caroline Hampton

Caroline Hampton Halsted (November 20, 1861 – November 27, 1922) was an American nurse who became the first to use medical gloves in the operating room.

Biography Caroline Hampton was a member of a prominent southern U.S. family; her uncle, Wade Hampton III, was a Confederate general, governor of South Carolina, and a US senator. Her mother, Sally (Baxter) Hampton died in 1862 of tuberculosis. Her father, Colonel Frank Hampton, died at the Battle of Brandy Station in early 1863 during the American Civil War. Their family home Millwood was burned, and Hampton was raised by three aunts, with the expectation that she would marry well, ideally to a southern plantation owner.

Halsted was surprised to return from an extended vacation and find that others in the operating room had also adopted rubber gloves, following Caroline's example. The gloves protected the medical staff's hands, and surgical assistants reported that the textured surface of the gloves made it easier to hold onto slippery surgical instruments. That they also protected patients was discovered by one of Halsted's surgical residents, Joseph Colt Bloodgood. In 1899, Bloodgood published results showing that use of gloves during surgery reduced postsurgical infection rates from 17% to less than 2%, a staggering effect. Caroline, as a married woman, was required to resign from her job at the hospital. Caroline ran their household during the winter, and their farm High Hampton in North Carolina during the summer.