Ambulatory

“ He has a convalescent patient as his personal servant, a “blue boy,” as we call them, a “light duty patient” who is so proud because he has an officer to wait on. There are American orderlies in his division of course, but the blue boy fetches his meals and putters over him, etc. Of course my nurses are in charge.
I brought all his kit and belongings down with him in the ambulance. I have his metal{119} helmet hanging here in my office. You can’t really imagine what a narrow escape he had until you see the dent in the edge of the thick steel hat that was made by the piece of shell. ”

“ No sooner had the doors of the ambulance slammed shut than strange things began to happen inside. A physician and a nurse who had been secreted in the car, fell upon the body with feverish haste, stripped it of clothing, dashed alcohol over it from head to foot, began to massage the still warm flesh, chafing the wrists, slapping limbs and torso with smart, stinging thumps. ”

“ Here I was given first aid, and the Médecin chef personally conducted me in an American Ambulance, in the middle of the night, to a very good hospital. They say I have the best doctor in France—in Paris.
AMERICAN AMBULANCE AT A DRESSING-STATION NEAR VERDUN
Well, I woke up the next day in a bed, and have been recuperating ever since. Every one is wonderful to me. General Pétain, second to Joffre, has stopped in to shake hands with me, and many are my congratulations, [Pg 247] too, for above my bed hangs the Médaille Militaire, the greatest honor the French can give any one. ”

“ An ambulance carries you somewhere so that you can get some rest; a traveling tooth-yankery doesn't give you a chance to rest. It's white, is the outside of the car, just like a baby's hearse, and just about as cheerful to contemplate. ”

“ If the patient is in an exceptionally suffering condition he is not placed on the receiving-hall bed; instead—the Medical Officer having given his permission—his stretcher is put on a wheeled trolley and he is taken straight away to his ward, so that he will only undergo one shift of position between the ambulance and his destination. ”

“ These ambulances were staffed by a fine set of young women, whose serviceable uniform and alert, well-drilled bearing were a credit to their service. It was a pleasure, when the ambulance turned into the square, to see these active girls, in their navy blue suits of breeches and tunic, swing themselves off the car, throw the doors open, unload and bear the stretcher with its burden to the casualty room. ”

“ The ambulance b rought him from a wine room, dead from a stroke of heart disease. At another time (it happens quite often) a young girl took poison. The physicians who saved her life seldom speak of the case. It she had died her story might have been told -- but she has to live.
And so the work goes on. For one man it means a clean bed and prescriptions with whisky in it, possibly, and for another, it is a place in the potters' field. The skill of the surgeon is exercised just the same, no matter what the cause of the injury or t he deserts of the patient. ”

“ A word of cheer to be spoken to all. It is indeed in the field [181] ambulance where valuable service is rendered to men and staff in a hundred ways.
"To keep in touch with most of our men thus passing through the ambulances, each ambulance operating in a different centre, necessitates from four to six hours' duty each night.
"Besides the work of the hospitals there are pressing day duties to be performed. Burials must receive attention. Regiments must be visited. Many calls are received from anxious and troubled men. Even the firing line claims attention at times in the performance of duty. ”

“ I’ve been in one, following the army, since the twenty-first of June; and it seems pretty good to be on a thing that don’t move.”
“But why weren’t you left in a hospital?”
“’Cause I begged so to go on with the rest. The ambulance was going, and I begged them to let me go in it, and I promised to be well for the fight; so they took me; but I got so much worse, I didn’t know when the fight was; it’s the typhoid I’ve got, and my head’s dreadful bad.”
“Your hair is so heavy,” said I; “we’ll take [200] some of that off and bathe your head, and that will relieve it.”
“Oh! no, ma’am; no, thank you ”

“ Last night I could not sleep for the noise of the guns; they must have been bombarding some place near at hand, for the whole earth seemed to shake.
The boys who drive the American ambulance and bring our patients in say this place is a sort of heaven to them, they are always glad to get here. Mrs. T—— does everything she can for them. They are a nice lot of boys and are doing good work.
73Some of the poor men who have lost large pieces of their intestines find the hospital diet a little hard. ”

“ By the time the realisation of the pain has come into full play the sufferer, in ordinary times, is in the clearing station or, at least, the field ambulance, and has the resources of science at his disposal. ”

“ One time there came a great hurry-up call for the ambulance when the ambulance surgeon was nowhere to be found. (This city hospital was next door to the police station.) The horses were hitched, and stomping and waiting. Again and again the call was repeated. A man, no doubt, lay dying. Still no ambulance surgeon. Muldoon fretted and waited. ”

“ The medical faculty of the capital volunteered their services in a body; ladies devoted themselves to “ambulance” work in a manner and on a scale never before witnessed, while volunteers as brancardiers gave their names in numbers beyond requirements241 even according to the most liberal estimates of probable casualties. ”

“ When the ambulances containing a new batch of wounded begin to roll up to the entrance of the hospital they are received by a squad of orderlies. To a spectator who happened to pass at that moment it might appear that these orderlies had nothing else to do but lift stretchers out of ambulances and carry them indoors. The squad of orderlies have an air of always being ready on duty waiting to pounce out on any patient who may arrive at any hour of the day or night and promptly transfer him to his bed. ”

“ Do you rather incline the patient to ask you about his own malady, showing him that you know more about it than he does. The patient's pulse, the patient's water, tell to a skilled physician the whole story of his disease. ”

“ Make me the model of an ambulance into which the disabled can be placed safely and comfortably, and which is arranged in such a manner that it may be taken asunder and transported on horseback with the train of the army. ”

“ Please understand this is not a criticism of our ambulance surgeons or our police department, ‘as they need more than a curbstone diagnosis’ but to give you an idea why you need an efficient medical department. A man may be sitting on a curb, or lying in the gutter in a collapsed condition, with cold clammy skin, unable to talk intelligently, with or without an alcoholic breath ”

“ Only by the assistance of kind friends did I reach the ambulance. The surgeon examined my arm, and could then do nothing more than to cord it again, and give me morphine. I was so weak as to be unable to walk or hardly stand. I got into the ambulance to go to the Division Hospital, which was seven miles distant over rough roads. It was eight o'clock in the evening when I arrived at this hospital. ”

“ The worn-out pensioners who were brought as an ambulance corps are totally useless, and not only are surgeons not to be had, but there are no dressers or nurses to carry out the surgeon's directions, and to attend on the sick during the intervals between his visits. ”

“ It may interest many of our readers to know, since the ambulance classes which have been established in most of our large towns have drawn attention to the subject, that a small case or chest, containing the requisites for ready treatment of injuries, may be had for a moderate sum. ”

“ From there to where I am now has been a series of more or less painful transfers through first aid posts, dressing stations and French hospitals, with a Red Cross train and a ninety kilometer ride in an ambulance. I don’t think you have ever known the joy of a ninety K. ride on the upper deck of a pitching [117] ambulance. It’s an experience. I appreciated the sensations of a pup with a tin can tied to his tail. ”

“ To this spot come the ambulance waggons bearing [142] their ghastly freight of broken bodies gathered from Regimental Aid Posts and Dressing Stations.
The doctors are busily at work. Night is their busiest time. We wonder when the doctor at the front sleeps. We wonder with how little sleep it is possible to support life. These men seem tireless. ”

“ A medical ambulance is theoretically able to undertake any hospital work, but in practice it confines itself when in action with its division to clearing the front line, and when at rest to treating the minor maladies such as lice, scabies, and slight illnesses which do not require much time or equipment. The medical and surgical outfit of an ambulance is carried in panniers and is usually in excess of its requirements. ”

“ The men, whatever their condition, lie there, and patiently wait till their turn comes to be taken up. Near by, the ambulances are now arriving in clusters, and one after another is call'd to back up and take its load. Extreme cases are sent off on stretchers. The men generally make little or no ado, whatever their sufferings. A few groans that cannot be suppress'd, and occasionally a scream of pain as they lift a man into the ambulance. ”

“ He enters the dwelling of the sick as if he were one of the family, and the very office that he is to perform disarms all formality, and pre-supposes intercourse of the most familiar character. The patient is to speak to him not of a foreign subject, nor of some one else, but of himself, of his own body, of its pains and ailments, and that too with sufficient minuteness to communicate an adequate knowledge of his case. ”

“ As each ambulance arrived the stretchers, their occupants for the most part silent, were drawn gently out and carried into the reception hall and laid upon the floor. At once each man—the nature of whose wounds permitted it—was given a cup of hot tea or of cold water, and a cigarette. Two by two they were lifted on to the trestles, and examined and dressed by the surgeons. ”

“ But Sir Gregory, the English surgeon, had probably some experience of cases like this. He put his hand through the arm of the German, and then giving a laugh that in an emergency might obviate the use of a lancet, he said loudly enough to be heard over a considerable area,—
“Come along, my dear friend; there is no visiting an hospital for the insane without coming across a lunatic,—a medical practitioner without discretion is worse.” ”

“ At odd moments I have been put through stretcher-drill and given rudimentary first-aid instruction. This afternoon and evening I was sent as an orderly on an ambulance running to the suburban station of Aubervilliers at which trains of wounded make a brief stop on their way from the front to the home hospitals in the south of France. ”

“ A Physician will reside in the house, and one or more Physicians, of established character and experience, will attend regularly, and afford medical aid in all cases where the general health, or the particular cause of the patient's insanity, may require it. ”

“ We salute the Nation's emergency medical services personnel: those who staff the ambulances, those who provide medical control, and those physicians and nurses in the trauma centers whose daily efforts are devoted to emergency medicine. We all depend upon their skills and dedication. ”

“ Hospital men are beginning to recognize that simply a thorough physical examination with a prescription for some medicine and a few hurried words of advice are not enough; that much of our effort and of our hospital endowment has been wasted, because we did not know anything about the conditions under which our patients lived ”

“ You must pretend to be taken ill, but your illness must be of such a kind that your doctor will be obliged to take your word for the symptoms. Luckily, I know a doctor whose sole idea is to order country air for all complaints. This physician, who is about as clever as his brethren, and kills or cures as well as any of them, will come and feel my pulse one of these days. You must take his advice, and for a couple of louis he will write you a prescription with country air as the chief item. He will then inform everybody that your case is serious, but that he will answer for your cure. ”

“ Our Medical Corps is especially entitled to praise for the general effectiveness of its work, both in hospital and at the front. Embracing men of high professional attainments, and splendid women devoted to their calling and untiring in their efforts, this department has made a new record for medical and sanitary proficiency. ”

“ Then one day a body of men marched into camp in column of fours, a military evolution which the ambulance drivers regarded with pitying contempt.
“Who are those men?” the question ran around.
“Ground school men,” was the reply, and the ex-ambulanciers immediately joined together in one clique against the others. ”

“ Again, not only is a firm and strict compliance with medical directions in the administration of remedies, of regimen, and general measures, necessary, but an unbiased, faithful, and full report of symptoms to the physician, when he visits his little patient, is of the first importance. An ignorant servant or nurse, unless great caution be exercised by the medical attendant, may, by an unintentional but erroneous report of symptoms, produce a very wrong impression upon his mind, as to the actual state of the disease. ”

“ General the hospital may be, general, as much as you will, in so far as the provisions, the cooking, the washing, the bedding, and the clothing of the sick are concerned, but let us, if possible, have their own surgeons to attend their own men. ”

“ But before very long I found myself surrounded with patients of my own, and this for two simple reasons. In the first place, the men (I am speaking of the “ranks” now) had a very serious objection to going into hospital for any but urgent reasons, and the regimental doctors were rather fond of sending them there; and, in the second place, they could and did get at my store sick-comforts and nourishing food, which the heads of the medical staff would sometimes find it difficult to procure. ”