"Before ...the flying ambulance, we seldom saw men who had lost both legs and arms..."
Dominique-Jean Larrey, surgeon
Ambulances first began to appear on the Napoleonic battlefields of France in 1792. Their inventor, surgeon Dominique-Jean Larrey (1766-1842), had grown frustrated with regulations requiring him to stay to the rear. After observing how the mobility of the French artillery helped it to quickly disengage from an advancing enemy, Larrey proposed to the military hierarchy what he called an ambulance volante, or "flying ambulance," that would follow the artillery into battle and tend to the wounded where they fell.
Larrey devised a horsedrawn wheeled carriage with a central compartment able to transport two patients comfortably on leather-covered horsehair mattresses; windows on either side provided good ventilation. Inside, patients could be moved in and out easily on floors seton rollers. Recessed areas contained medicines and medical equipment, and ramps at the rear doubled as emergency operating tables.
Larrey and his team tended the wounded on the basis of their injuries rather than rank or status. Those likely to die from their wounds were set aside in favor of treating those who were deemed not to be mortally wounded—this brought the French word triage, meaning "sorting," into the surgeon's lexicon.
