Farmcarts to Fords: A History of the Military Ambulance, 1790-1925 (Medical Humanities Series)

This book is the first history of the techniques, systems, and technologies used to evacuate wounded from the battlefield. Historically, the word ambulance described those facilities that provided temporary assistance to the wounded, thus distinguishing them from stationary hospitals where military personnel received more permanent care. Americans and British, however, applied the term to the two-to four-wheeled transport conveyances that carried wounded from the battlefield to the war hospitals. With the aid of fifty-four illustrations, John S. Haller traces the histories of both meanings of the word from the Napoleonic era through the Great War and its aftermath. He concentrates on the development of British and American evacuation procedures and technology with a focus on hand conveyances and wheeled vehicles. His intent is not to cover all aspects of medical evacuation but to accurately recount the common medical evacuation problems, incongruities, and controversies that existed for warring nations. In this, the first history of the techniques, systems, and technologies used to evacuate wounded from the battlefield, John Haller Jr., documents the evolution of the ambulance from the times of close-order, volley-firing linear platoons to the days of open-order skirmishes, high-velocity small arms, explosive shells, shrapnel, hand grenades, and bombs