"The Military Influence on Emergency Medical Services
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In 1865, the United States Army originated the first ambulance service in the U.S. The mission of the service was to decrease mortality rates on the battlefield. By the late 1800s, ambulance services in U.S. cities such as New York, Cincinnati, and Indianapolis began as hospital-based operations.
U.S. Marine casualties returning from battle zones after being evacuated by landing ship, are shown being assisted into awaiting ambulances on January 8, 1944.
Courtesy of The National Museum of Health and Medicine, Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, photo # SC186801. The MASH (Mobile Army Surgical Hospital) network developed during the Korean and Vietnam conflicts gave many healthcare providers their first experience with a transportation-dependent method of triaging, thus attempting to save the most seriously injured patients.
Many expert medical consultants who had returned from both the Korean and Vietnam conflicts publicly asserted that the chances of survival of the seriously wounded would have been better in a combat zone than on the average U.S. city street. Thus in 1966, the report, Accidental Death and Disability: The Neglected Disease of Modern Society, was published by the National Academy of Sciences. This report paved the way for wider implementation of EMS." |
