I.

INTRODUCTION

The focus of the researchers is all about the usage of rubber in the medical field specifically

in prosthesis and implants in the human body. Rubber can be very helpful and convenient in the

terms of some aspects like medication and many more. There are tens of thousands of uses that a

rubber can perform that people didn’t actually know. Truth be told, the first thing that pops-up in

people’s minds when they hear the word rubber is the elastic and stretchy rubber band. Rubber is

more than just what you use to bind something or you use to insulate electricity, rubber is a strong,

waterproof, elastic substance made from the juice of a tropical tree or produced chemically.

The first one to use rubber was the indigenous cultures of Mesoamerica. The earliest

archeological evidence of the use of natural latex from the Hevea tree or Rubber tree comes

the Olmec culture, in which rubber was first used for making balls for the Mesoamerican ballgame

which you shoot the rubber ball using only your hips. Time passed, this people learned the other

uses of rubber. For example, they dip their feet to rubber and it gave them shoes. Because of

rubber’s water proof property, they even used it as clothing.

In 1492, Christopher Columbus sailed from New York to the New World and found out

the existence of rubber. He was fascinated about the rubber and take it back to his home land and

gave it to his king. The king gave him rewards because the royalties were mesmerized by the

versatility of the rubber. Then, Christopher Columbus was enslaved by money and wealth, he

wanted more than just rewards from the royalties so he took more rubber from the New World and

sold it to Europeans. But things didn’t turn out well in his favor and he ends up like a trash.
 In 1839, Charles Goodyear, an American inventor, born December 29, 1800. One day, he

was experimenting on a rubber, he accidentally dropped the rubber to a hot stove and enhance the

properties of rubber and he called it vulcanization. Imagine if this process wasn’t discovered, our

car tire will melt when the scorching sun is up and will freeze and shatter when the cold freezing

snow came in blizzard.

That was rubber when it was first used in the industry. The reason why rubber was used in

the medical field was because of Dr. William Stewart Halstead’s wife, Caroline Hampton had

rashes when she handled chemicals for a surgery hence they are barehanded when they perform a

surgery. So the Goodyear Rubber Corporation tried to make a gloves made of rubber for her and

Hampton loved it, and more pairs arrived. Not long after, Halstead’s entire surgical staff wore

them during operations. At the time, they assumed the primary benefit was increased dexterity and

gave little thought to hygiene.

Joseph Lister, the first surgeon to sterilize his surgical tools and dressings, was responsible

for making surgical gloves sterile because about 50 percent of all surgical patients died in 1894.

Many of the fatalities were proven guilty of the fact that surgeons did not wash their hands between

surgeries and examinations, thereby passing pathogens between patients. Lister used carbolic acid

to sterilize his instruments. This action would be the founding of antiseptic surgery and the

inspiration for the development of Listerine.

That was only the first in using rubber in medical field, rubber further developed

through the years and used as main component in some medical equipment and devices. This topic

will be thoroughly explained in the discussion of this research paper. The researchers hoped for

your full attention in every part of this research paper.