Great history! I will add another bit - the first paramedic program was the Freedom House Ambulance Service in Pittsburgh. Started in 1967, the Service was staffed by Black men and women who were then cast aside when in 1975 the city started its own EMS. There's a book about Freedom Ambulance Service: American Sirens by Kevin Hazzard.
More information:
Freedom House Ambulance: The FIRST Responders | A WQED Documentary
The Little-Known History of the Black Men Who Became America's First Paramedics
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Kate Flewelling, MLIS, AHIP
Director, Library Services
Boston University Medical Campus
flewkate@bu.edu------------------------------
Original Message:
Sent: 07-13-2023 07:56:55 AM
From: Nicole Buckley
Subject: #TBT: First hospital ambulance in the US
The earliest use of ambulances occurred on battlefields to treat war wounded. Historical records show that the first hospital-based ambulance service in the US dates back to 1865, at Commercial Hospital at University of Cincinnati. The second ambulance service put into practice was at Bellevue Hospital which put city-wide ambulance service into practice in New York in 1869. Can you imagine being sick and jostled by a horse drawn carriage? We offer these cool photos of early ambulance models, to prove how far we've come since then:
1899 Presbyterian Hospital in NYC, courtesy US National Library of Medicine:
Ambulance circa 1910-1919, courtesy of Michigan State University Archives:
1948 Cadillac ambulance, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons:
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Nicole Buckley
Communications Strategist
Association of American Medical Colleges
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