The Camden journal. [volume] (Camden, S.C.) 1866-1891, 1883-11-08
A CITY,S AMBULANCE SERVICE.
How New York Provides for Accidents
and Casualties.

How New York Provides for Accidents
and Casualties.
To some of the downtown police
precincts the ambulances are called
often half a dozen times in single
night. 1t is then that the great crop of
drunks is reaped and that nearly all
the fighting and numbering is done
BY day accidents to workmen and peo-
pie in the streets engage the attention
of the hospital surgeons. The ambu-
lance horses stand all day and night in
a Dutch cellar ready to turn out at a
moments notice: Under the drivers
seat is little drug store containing
the essentials in emergency treatment.
Frequently the call comes over the fire
wires-twenty strokes of the bell and
the number of the box where the am
bulance is wanted. 1t starts from the
nearest hospital. Rarely the ominous
twenty-five notes spells out the mes
sage: "Send all the ambu-
lances in the city," as it did the
day when the Riverdale blew up. Then
a race for life and death takes place
from up town and from down town,
for which all other traffic must give
way. The ambulance, like the mail
wagon, has the right of way every
where.
In the lighting precincts, Fourth
Sixth, Eighth, Fourteenth, all below
Houston street, the hours between IL
at night and 2 o'clock in the morning
are usually the busiest, particularly on
Saturday nights. On Sunday mornings
the term is stretched couple of hours
till daylight in honor of the excise law
In New York satan works hardest
when the churches are open, and idle
ness and rum are his tools. A police
sergeant's life is not sinecure in these
precincts. His responsibility is great,
and usually he is not willing to take
chances. Too many fatal mistakes of
judgment ara 5s record. Any wound
on the head or bad looking cut is cause
enough to discard the doorman's sur
gerry for the doctors. If the subject
is a prisoner or refuses to 60 to the
hospital, the police sugeon is sent for.
Unconscious cases almost invariably
bring out the ambulance. The single
word, poison" added to the message
from headquarters spells at the hospi-
tai the sentence, "Bring the stomach
pump, and hurry up" And they hur-
ry. Not long since an ambulance on
the way to the scene of reported acci-
dent ran over a man on Third avenue.
stopped to pick him up, and returned
with two patients instead of one.
The sick-wagon, by contrast, comes
at leisure. AL urgent cases are for
II tnv-passiss nv-passaissssass aid isrcanpot refuse.
them. Transfers from one hospital to
another can be made afterward. With
sick patients it is different. Usually
they can wait. They belong, as the
case happens to be contagious or not,
under the board of health or the de-
partment of charities and correction,
if they have not the means to employ
a doctor of their own, as they seldom
have. The "sick cases" come from the
tenements, the lodging houses and the
streets. If the patient has been less
than five years in the county he is re-
fused by the ambulance and the sick.
wagon. and the emigration depart
ment's wagon comes after official delay
of sometimes many hours to take the
"caSe'"'CO WarQ s lSlanQ.
The recently established night medi-
cal service has provided most useful
and welcome expedient in such cases,
by putting into the hands of the police
the means of bringing immediate re-
lief, while insuring to the doctor his
pay. Of the twenty odd persons bene-
fitted by the service in one month not
one was able or willing to pay for the
help rendered, but left that to the city
at the rate of So a call.-Ne,o York
World.
A Startling Statement.