An ambulance service is connected with the New York, Roosevelt, and Bellevue Hospitals. The ambulance is used in nearly all cases of street accidents, some cases of disease, and many cases of violent inebriety. It can be summoned by telegraph from any police station, or from any alarm box of the Fire Department, by tapping the Morse key twenty times and sounding the box number. lt is familiar in all localities and at all hours-a covered wagon with a neatly uniformed surgeon sitting behind. The alarm is received in the telegraph office in the hospital and then transmitted simultaneously to the stables and the rooms of the surgeons, where it is annunciated by nine resonant strokes on a small gong.The vehicle is constructed on a plan to minimize pain in carrying tbe sufferer to the hospital for permanent treatment, and the surgeon has with him instruments and appliances for giving temporary alleviation, such as splinting and binding a fracture or sewing up a wound.Appletons’ dictionary of New York and its vicinity. 1883. | |