page_title: Stretcher
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Stretcher / History
caption_attribution_description: Chair Stretcher, with a patient carried by bearers marching in file. General Collections Keywords: Military Medicine
context_page_description: A stretcher, litter, or pram is an apparatus used for moving patients who require medical care. A basic type must be carried by two or more people. A wheeled stretcher is often equipped with variable height frames, wheels, tracks, or skids. In American English, a wheeled stretcher can also be referred to as a gurney.
  Stretchers are primarily used in acute out-of-hospital care situations by emergency medical services, military, and search and rescue personnel. In medical forensics the right arm of a corpse is left hanging off the stretcher to let paramedics know it is not a wounded patient. They are also used to hold prisoners during lethal injections in the United States.
context_section_description: An early stretcher, likely made of wicker over a frame, appears in a manuscript from c.1380. Simple stretchers were common with militaries right through the middle of the 20th century.
caption: Illustration of chair stretcher, "On the Transport of sick and wounded troops", 1868.
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