Illustrated lectures on ambulance work / by R. Lawton Roberts.

  • Roberts, R. Lawton.
Date:
1895
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Illustrated lectures on ambulance work / by R. Lawton Roberts. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    ciation. Our Military Ambulance Waggon, which is drawn by two or more horses (as occasion requires), is powerfully built and provided with strong springs, as it is designed to travel “ with ease and security over any ground, soft, rugged, or broken, and down anj7 declivity, over which the rest of the transport of the army can be taken ”it is also “ made so as to be readily taken to pieces, folded up, and to be put to- gether into a convenient package, for stowage on board ship,” in order that it may “be available for military operations in a foreign country” :f it is “arranged for accommodating two slightly wounded men, together with the driver, sitting in front; two badly wounded lying on stretchers in the body of the waggon ; and three slightly wounded, or two with an attendant, seated behind, and resting their feet on the ledge of the tail-board: the diameter of the fore wheels is 3 feet; of the hind wheels 4 feet 8 inches,” so that the waggon can be turned on its own ground : a tank containing 10 gallons of water and a receptacle for forage are fitted beneath the floor of the waggon; and the floor is divided longitudinally down the middle by a wooden partition 14 inches high, on each side of which a Regulation Stretcher—with a badly wounded soldier lying on it—is run in upon its rollers : the sides of the waggon are 1 foot 8 inches high ; and the frame- work forming the upper portion of the vehicle is provided with a water-proof double-canvas roof, from which single canvas sides can be pulled down or rolled up as high as is desired: “ places are provided for the valises of the wounded men between the stretcher-handles, before and behind,” and “ there are also straps fixed to the floor of the waggon for securing the rifles of the wounded men: ” and two spare stretchers are carried rolled up on each side “ on the top of the side rail of the waggon.” Several waggons of this de- scription wTere used by the British National Aid Society in the Franco-German War: the vehicles were sent, made up into packages, by ship from Woolwich to Havre, where they were unpacked, and, the different parts being put together, all the waggons—twenty in number—were in five hours ready for the road: and though “ they were subjected to very severe usage during the whole of several months in the trying winter of 1870-71; yet, in the following spring, they returned to England in so serviceable a condition that the * Transport of Sick and Wounded Troops, Surg.-General Longmore.