AMBULANCE SOCIETIES.
We have this month, in the article ‘An Order of Mercy’ (p. 15 [Transcriber’s note: See [https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/64345].]), described the operations of the St John Ambulance Association, London, and are pleased to be able to notice that a similar organisation is being set on foot in the Scottish metropolis. The subject was recently brought before the public by Professor Chiene, of the Edinburgh University, in a lecture delivered under the auspices of the Edinburgh Health Society. The lecturer spoke of the importance of speedy aid to those who are hurt, and to those who are taken suddenly ill in our streets. At present, in such cases, he said, such persons came under the care of kindly bystanders or the police, none of whom have received any instruction whatever in what is now commonly known as ‘first aid to the sick or wounded.’ The personi was placed either in a cab or on a police-stretcher, and the lecturer could imagine nothing worse adapted for the conveyance of a patient with a fractured limb than a cab. In the case of the police-stretcher, the only advantage it had was the recumbent posture of the patient; in every other particular it was a most inefficient means of conveyance. He asked if the time had not come when they should try and find some remedy. In London, the St John Ambulance Association had been in existence for seven years; in Glasgow, the St Andrew’s Ambulance Association was now in full working order; and surely Edinburgh, with all its charitable organisations, with its important hospitals, with the largest medical school in Great Britain, should not be behind in this important matter. During the last three years an average of seven hundred and twenty cases of accident each year had been treated as in-patients in the Royal Infirmary; many other cases had been taken there, their wounds and injuries dressed, and afterwards sent to their own homes. Many cases of accident were conveyed directly to their own homes; many cases of sudden illness were conveyed either to the hospital or their own homes, and he did not think he was over-estimating it when he said that fifteen hundred cases occurred every year in Edinburgh which would benefit from a speedy and comfortable means of conveyance from the place of accident to the place of treatment. In the formation and working of such a society, he would give all the help he could. Mr Cunningham, the secretary of the Glasgow Association, had the cause at heart; and he was sure Mr Miller, one of the surgeons in the Edinburgh Infirmary, and Dr P. A. Young, both of whom had already given ambulance lectures to Volunteers, would give their hearty help. Many of the junior practitioners and senior students would, he was sure, assist as lecturers; and they would soon have in Edinburgh a ready band of certificated assistants, who would give efficient first aid to any one who was injured, and would assist the police in removing them to the hospital or their own homes.
We are glad to observe that as one result of Professor Chiene’s appeal, a Committee of Employers in Edinburgh and Leith is being formed for the purpose of having employees instructed in the manner proposed, so that many of the latter may be able to give practical assistance in the event of accidents happening where they are employed.