A closer look
Modern life-saving civilian ambulance services trace their surprising historical origins back to Napoleon Bonaparte's chief surgeon, who was incredibly frustrated by watching highly trained soldiers bleed to death in the mud while waiting for the battle to end. Before this brilliant military innovation, injured troops were essentially left screaming in the dirt until the fighting completely stopped, at which point slow horse-drawn wagons would finally be dispatched to collect the survivors. The French surgeon invented the concept of the 'flying ambulance', which were lightweight, fast carriages that brazenly rushed directly into active combat zones to perform chaotic triage and evacuate casualties while cannons were still firing. So the loud, flashing van that currently navigates through gridlocked city traffic to treat your indigestion owes its entire operational existence to a bunch of nineteenth-century French guys trying to save people from cannonballs!
