Horse-Drawn Military, Civilian, Veterinary Ambulances, Carriage Museum of America, 2004
The archives of the Carriage Museum of America has provided the foundation for yet another unique book for horse drawn vehicles, focusing on ambulances.
There have been only a handful of books published about ambulances - some of them being very authoritative treatises. This book compiles information that was scattered in other publications to make an unique treatise of its own standing.
The first section of the book covers the military ambulance focusing on the specifications and drawings that could be found for building such vehicles. In order that civil-war re-enactors can make a complete and authentic turnout the specifications for the harness is included along with the reprinting of the text from the Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion relating to the history of the ambulance corps.
Florence Nightingale is given credit for the first organized effort of caring for wounded and injured during the Crimean War 1854-1856. At the beginning of the Civil-War caring for the wounded and injured was virtually non existent, but by the end of the war there was a highly organized ambulance corp. The Military ambulance chapter ends with specifications and drawings of the ambulance of 1900-1915 and illustrations of them in use.
The second section of the book begins with the history of civilian ambulance reprinted from an 1885 Reference Handbook of the Medical Sciences. It is around 1866 that the civilian ambulance service began to be organized in city hospitals and this chapter contains the drawings and specifications that were printed in the Hub and Carriage Monthly for the professional carriage builders--published monthly they contained the latest and best improvements in ambulances from United States, England and France.
The second part of this section of the books contains stories and illustrations of what it was like to be on an ambulance call in the city from publications like Harper's Weekly and Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper. This section ends with illustrations of the harness for the horse for emergency vehicles - largely adapted from the harness used by fire departments.
The hospital ambulance service was always striving to be the most effective, and being able to hitch the horse in the least amount of time helped to dispatch the ambulance in the quickest way to the victim.
Many people in the 21st century probably do not realized what a huge problem it was to care for all the horses on the streets. Some horses became sick through neglect and others slipped and lost their footing.
Section three of the book is veterinary ambulances for horses drawn by horses - with a few small animal ambulances for cats and dogs. Henry Bergh is given credit for starting the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and establishing the use of the horse ambulance in New York City in 1869.
There were horses every where on city streets and it was an enormous and overwhelming problem what to do with sick and injured horses - this often led to problems of sanitation if the horses weren't cared for. Private companies that had hundreds of horses in use such as the fire department and milk delivery companies soon followed suit with their own private company ambulance.
Frank Leslie and Harper Bros., were listed as a members of the S. P. C. A., and their newspapers were active in trying to change public opinion and stop the abuse toward dumb animals with articles on the use of the check-rein and other abuses.
Over all, section three covers a large range of topics relating to the life and death of 19th century horse--the horse plague, care of the military horse. The book ends with the "Life of 19th Century Cats and Dogs."
The book covers a variety of topics related to the horse drawn ambulances, with something of interest to anyone interested in history, horses, ambulances, or military history.
8 1/2" x 11", 370 pages, 500 B&W photos and illustrations, softcover, ISBN: 1-880499-16-9, BH6971 / $37.00
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