Ambulance: Make way

2024 Author: Erin Ralphs | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-19 11:42

Life in modern cities is filled with sounds, many of which have become so familiar that we hardly pay attention to them. The calls of traders in the markets, the noise of the construction site, advertisements coming from the loudspeakers, the roar of the subway. And yet, when a siren is heard on the crowded pavement, the heart involuntarily shrinks and the thought immediately comes: "Someone feels bad." And an ambulance rushes to help him.

Indispensable transport

Seldom does anyone think about where such a service originates as the prompt arrival of doctors to a person who is ill or in a situation dangerous to life or he alth. We tend to think that this has always been the case. But, of course, this is not true. Although almost all people are naturally inclined to help their neighbor in trouble, they began to try to systematize such help, turning it into an ambulance, only at the end of the 19th century. Serious thinking about this problem began in Austria, after in 1881 a fire in one of the theaters in Vienna claimed the lives of 479 people. The most annoying thing was that there were many high-level hospitals in the city, but patients could not be delivered and served quickly enough. But even then it was still far awayto such a thing as an ambulance. At first, ordinary carriages were used, which are sometimes traditionally mentioned today instead of cars used by doctors.

Technological progress

As the automotive industry developed, so did the models designed to arrive at patients and provide them with the best possible first aid. So, already in 1906 in New York there were 6 such machines, which, by the way, worked on electric traction. The car "OPEL DoktorWagen" is truly the most famous ambulance of those times. Being simple and unpretentious, she helped doctors both to get without any problems to patients living in hard-to-reach areas, and to transport them if necessary. In the USSR, the ZIS and GAZ plants took over this work. In the thirties, the ambulance almost everywhere looked familiar to everyone. This is a true GAZ-55 car, in which a maximum of 10 people were placed in various combinations of sitting and bedridden patients.

State of the Art

Years passed, many other cars were produced and then discontinued, and finally, from the 2nd half of the 1970s, the country got acquainted with a car that turned into an uncontested tool designed to serve people in need of a doctor. The famous "Rafik" - RAF 22031, the number one ambulance of those times. The drivers who drove it still speak fondly of thisfamous car for its soft suspension and good maneuverability. Modern ambulances, including intensive care vehicles, look more like miniclinics than just cars. It does not matter what exactly happened: some part of the body was injured, a heart attack occurred or a person received severe burns - already on the road, on the way to the clinic, thanks to modern equipment, doctors can provide the patient with services that were once unavailable even in the hospitals themselves.