Hospital-based ambulance service

Year

1865

Company

Commercial Hospital of Cincinnati

Place

Cincinnati, Hamilton County ZIP 45202 · Cincinnati · Hamilton County

Before the 1860s, an injured person was usually carried by friends, a cart or a police wagon. There was no vehicle staffed to bring care to the patient. Cincinnati's Commercial Hospital tried something new.

The hospital is described as running the first known hospital-based ambulance service by 1865, after the Civil War, drawing on lessons from Jonathan Letterman's Army ambulance corps. By 1872 its ambulances could be called by telegraph. New York's Bellevue Hospital followed in 1869, led by Dr. Edward Dalton, a former Civil War ambulance-corps physician.

The hospital became the University of Cincinnati Medical Center. Cincinnati's fire department, which became the first paid professional department in the country in 1853, now operates 14 ambulances.

Why it matters: getting a patient to treatment fast became a public service, not only a favor.

• 1853: Cincinnati forms the first paid professional fire department in the U.S., which now runs the city's ambulances. (Cincinnati, OH) source
• 1865: Commercial Hospital of Cincinnati is running a hospital-based ambulance service by this year. (Cincinnati, OH) source
• 1869: Bellevue Hospital in New York starts a service. (New York) source
• 1872: Ambulances can be summoned by telegraph in Cincinnati. (Cincinnati, OH) source

• Cincinnati's fire department now runs 14 ambulances alongside 26 engines.

Often cited as the first civilian hospital ambulance service in the U.S.

• Wikipedia: Cincinnati Fire Department

• Wikipedia: History of the ambulance (search excerpt)
• Wikipedia: Cincinnati Fire Department
• Civil War Medicine: Post-War Ambulance Services