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Podcast: Today In History with The Retrospectors
Episode: The Earliest Ambulance
Description: Rerun: During the Siege of Malaga, on 7th May 1487, Queen Isabella of Spain commissioned bespoke bed-wagons to transport injured soldiers from the battlefield to specially-erected tent hospitals, the world's earliest ambulance.Despite this innovation, it was hundreds of years before the concept - and the word ‘ambulance’ - gained common currency worldwide, notably thanks to the American Civil War.In this episode, The Retrospectors consider the propagandic purpose of transporting the wounded; evaluate the hearse-like designs of the first motorised ambulances; and reveal why ambulances were feared and ridiculed by those who had to u...