From earliest times, people have required a means of transporting their wounded an sick.

Early patients were probably carried in a hammock slung between two poles. A more formalized ambulance surfaced in the 15th century, when Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain took an unprecedented interest in the welfare of their troops during their crusade against the Moors. Surgical and medical supplies were brought together in special tents for the wounded called ambulancias.

Most ambulance innovation happens during wartime and is adapted to civilian life. American hospitals initiated their own ambulance services during the late 1860's, drawing on lesson learned from the bloody battlefields of the War Between the States. These horse drawn ambulances had a movable floor that could be taken out to receive the patient. Beneath the driver's seat was a container carrying a quart of brandy, two tourniquets, six bandages, six small sponges, splint material, blankets and a two ounce vial of persulphate of iron.

During World War I, buses and taxies were adapted for ambulance use. Trains and steamboats were also used to evacuate wounded. In some cities streetcar/trolley ambulances were used in the late 1800's. In 1937, Hess and Eisenstadt of Cincinnati developed the idea that an ambulance should be a pre-hospital emergency room and filled their vehicles with medicine cabinets, two way radios and roof lights.

As America became more airborne, so did the ambulance. The Med flight and Pegasus helicopters that transport the sick and injured from Goochland's fields and roadways to state-of-the-art emergency rooms saving precious life-giving seconds, are an outgrowth of med copters perfected in the Korean and Viet Nam wars.

Ambulances have been serving Goochland since 1967 when Goochland Volunteer Fire Company 5 formed the county's first rescue squad.

"Our first ambulance was a solid sided carry-all vehicle, the same kind used by electricians," former Goochland Volunteer fire-rescue Assistant Chief Tucker Hill, a founding member, recalled. "We put that ambulance into service in 1967. For a while, it served all of Goochland. Fully equipped, it cost $6,000. It was strictly Basic Life Support, though.

"By today's standards, that ambulance was downright primitive. The only training the rescue members had was basic first aid. We didn't even get CPR training until 1969," Hill added.

Before the ambulance was available, a local undertaker sometimes loaned a hearse to transport sick or inured county resident to area hospitals. Today, Goochland's five volunteer rescue squads have eight modern ambulances that regularly transport Goochland's sick and injured to area hospitals including MCV and the University of Virginia Hospital in Charlottesville.

The newest ambulances in service are operated by the volunteer Emergency Medical Technicians of Manakin Company 1 and Centerville Company 3. Hadensville Company 6 is in the process of buying a new ambulance for their territory.

These modern marvels cost more than $125,000 fully equipped. Instead of a bottle of brandy under the front seat, today's ambulances are equipped with amazing new technology like defibrillators to combat heart attacks and monitors able to transmit a patients vital signs directly to the emergency room.