By Jim Baraw (NAS Director)
One of the tasks I have to take care of for the “Web Site” it to develop a full and accurate history of the ambulance department. In doing this, I have, and will get to interview many interesting people in Northfield who have been involved with us in the past. In an effort to bring people up to date about the Department and it’s history, I will be starting a monthly article about this “History of the Northfield Ambulance”, and where we came from, and where we are now. My hope is to educate members current and future on this department’s history, going back to the Day’s of William Lyons, Ambulance Attendant… Yes William “Bill” Lyons, Fire Chief, to current time in 2005. But before I get into that, I feel it is vitally important for people to know where EMS gets some of its roots. So, with that in mind, this month will be the history of early EMS. The concept of emergency medicine is as old as time. In the past, people responding to medical and traumatic emergencies might have prayed or chanted to religious idols for divine intervention. They would have also used euthanasia or primitive surgical procedures in some cases. Today as it was then, their desire was to make it better for the sick and injured.
Knights of St. John, During the Crusades in the 11th Century, the Knights of St. John received first-aid instructions from Arab and Greek Doctors. This enabled the Knights of St. John to provide relief for the wounded of both sides in tents close to the battlefield.
Imagine smoke filled battlefields with injured, broken and blooded soldiers strewn across them. The Battlefields of Europe is where the concept of an ambulance service originated from, "no MedEvac though" just other soldiers picking the bodies of the dead and injured after the battle. Men would be paid a small reward for saving the lives of injured soldiers.
In Napoleon's time, the Surgeon-in-Chief of the Grand Army, "Baron Dominique Larry" created the first army medical corp. in 1792, instructing his medical corp. With trained attendants and equipment, to move out from field hospitals and search for and give aid to the wounded where they lay, returning them to the field hospitals by stretcher handcarts and wagons. However, the mortality for soldiers who received wounds in battle was horrendous. An open leg or arm fracture was regarded as a sentence of death, with the only question being would death occur before or after an amputation. Over 40% of wounded with all kinds of open fractures in the Franco-Prussian war (1870-71) died, of 13,000 amputations performed by the French, some 10,000 patients died.
All the major wars of the 18th, 19th and 20th century saw developments in the delivery of medical aid to wounded soldiers, on and off the battlefield. Motorized vehicles have been in use since the beginning of the 20th century, and in the 1950s the United States pioneered helicopter ambulances during the Korean War. During the Vietnam War, 97.5% of injured soldiers reaching emergency medical care survived. In the late 1960's an American had a better chance of quick definitive care provided by Paramedics coming out of the jungle than he had after being hit on a highway in the United States. Pre-hospital emergency care in the Southeast Asian conflict was a high priority for the US Government, though at home it had not even been born yet.
In 1968, St. Vincent's Hospital in New York City started the USA’s first mobile coronary care unit. The program at first used physicians, then paramedics.
In 1972, The National Academy of Sciences in "The White Paper" stated that emergency medicine is one of the weakest links in the delivery of health care in the United States. Emergency Medicine did not even become a recognized specialty until 1979 through the AMA and 1980 by the AOA.
During the 70’s, another EMS revolution was about to take place, and no one ever thought twice about it, and the impact it would have, “Squad 51, Respond to….”"Emergency!" It Changed America's Concept of EMS Forever When firefighters/paramedics John Gage and Roy Desoto arrived in America's living rooms every Saturday night, the face of emergency medical services (EMS) changed forever. In the early 1970's, for the first time, highly trained personnel-paramedics-responding in an "emergency room on wheels," took directions via radio from medical personnel back at the hospital as they worked to stabilize injured, ill and dying patients before transport to a medical facility.
