Caroline Hampton

Caroline Hampton Halsted (20 Nov. 1861 – 27 Nov. 1922) was a nurse who became the first to use medical gloves in the operating room, at the instigation of her spouse-to-be William Stewart Halsted.

She was a member of a prominent southern family; her uncle, Wade Hampton III, was a Confederate General, governor of South Carolina, and a US senator. Her father, Colonel Frank Hampton, died early in the Civil War. Their family home was burned, and Hampton was raised by three aunts.

Against her family's wishes, she went to nursing school in New York. Halsted appointed her chief nurse of the operating room at Johns Hopkins Hospital. Her marriage to Halsted was notable for the eccentricity of each. Anecdotes about their modes of entertaining, attachment to pets and marital life amused local society.

The impetus for Hampton's use of gloves was her development of contact dermatitis from the hospital's antiseptic solution. Dr. Halsted requested that the Goodyear Rubber Company make some rubber gloves. The gloves worked well when Halsted's team trialed them.

Caroline Hampton Halsted at Find a Grave

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