New York invented the surgeon-staffed ambulance in 1869

In 1869, Bellevue Hospital in New York launched the first ambulance service with a surgeon on board, two years before London. Each carriage carried a box beneath the seat with tourniquets, splints, a flask of medicinal brandy for shock, and a set of scalpels. The intern on duty ran out in his underwear under the coat: the standing order was «no time to dress». The dispatch point was the 3rd district police station; when an alert came in, an officer pulled a cord that rang in the hospital stables and the two horses —Napoleon and Duchess, per the administration ledger— took about ninety seconds to be harnessed. The first call went out on 9 June 1869 to a man struck by a streetcar on Broadway. In a single year Bellevue logged 1,401 runs and a twelve-minute average from call to stretcher. In 1873 the carriage was redesigned: the driver's seat was raised so he could stay seated during transport, and an ice cooler for severe bleeding was fitted under the floor. London copied the model in 1878; five years later, forty American hospitals had their own ambulances. The brandy stayed in Bellevue's emergency box until 1932: interns called it «the coachman's sedative», and not because the patient drank it.