History of Medical Transportation – Part 1

Let’s take a look back at where medical transportation began.  You may be surprised to learn that it did not begin in the United States.  At it’s most rudimentary beginnings, I guess we can look to the St Bernard dog pulling a sled down the Alps.  These heroic canines were said to have saved the lives of about 2,000 people, from lost children to Napoleon’s soldiers, over the span of over 200 years.    However, as with many innovations in Emergency Medical Service (EMS), the concept of transporting the injured by aircraft has its origins in the military, and the concept of using aircraft as ambulances is almost as old as powered flight itself.  Air medical transport likely first occurred in1870 during the Siege of Paris when 160 wounded French soldiers were transported by hot-air balloons to France.    During the First World War,  air ambulances were tested by various military organizations.  Aircraft were still primitive at the time, with limited capabilities, and the effort received mixed reviews.  The idea continued to be explored, however, and by 1936, an organized military air ambulance service was evacuating wounded from the Spanish Civil War for medical treatment in Nazi Germany.   The first dedicated use of helicopters by U.S. forces occurred during the Korean War, during the period from 1950-1953.  Helicopters expanded their services to moving critical patients to more advanced hospital ships once initial emergency treatment in field hospitals had occurred.  Knowledge and use of aircraft as ambulances continued to evolve along with  the aircraft themselves, and 1969, in Vietnam, the use of use of specially trained medical corpsman and helicopters as ambulances led U.S. researchers to conclude that servicemen wounded in battle had a better rate of survival that motorists injured on California freeways.  This conclusion inspired the first use of civilian paramedics in the world.