It is customary to attribute the introduction of gloves into surgical practice to William Stewart Halsted [1852-1922] of Johns Hopkins Hospital, but it was his assistant, Joseph Colt Bloodgood [1867-1935] who, from February 1897 onwards, was the first to equip the whole theatre staff with rubber gloves. In Ireland, as elsewhere, the introduction of the revolutionary adjunct to aseptic technique was not without controversy or bizarre interpretation, before its eventual adoption.