JAIEBULANCE, a military term which is somewhat differently applied in different coun tries. In France, an A. is a portable hospital, one of which is attached to every division of an army in the field, and provided with all the requisites for the medical succor of sick and wounded troops. Such an A. is stationed at some spot removed from immediate danger; and soldiers arc sedulously employed after a battle in seeking out those who have fallen, and conveying them to the A. Baron Larrey, during the great wars of the first Napoleon, brought this department of medical business to a high degree of effi ciency, and set an example to the rest of Europe. When England engaged in war with ItusSia in 1854, the A. arrangements, like many others relating to the army, were in a very imperfect state. In the English army, A., strictly speaking, means a held hospital with all its wagons, litters, tents, cooking canteen, etc.; but sometimes the n:unc is ap plied to a four-wheeled wagon or a two-wheeled cart fitted up for the reception of wounded men. When lord Raglan was about to be sent out with the army, Dr. Guthrie, president of the college of surgeons, devised a new form of A. cart; while Dr. Andrew Smith, director-general of the army and ordnance medical department, invented a new A. wagon. Annexed is a figure of DI r. Guthrie's A. cart. The badly wounded were laid on it at•ull length, while those slightly hurt sat in front and rear, and on the sides. A stretcher is slung from the top for the accommodation of the former. The bdck-board is let down for cases requiring amputation. The hospital chests are lashed underneath. Many of Smith's A. wagons and of Guthrie's A. carts were at once made and sent out to the c.:;:but they were not at the proper place when most wanted. After the battle of the
Alma,:the English were almost entirely destitute of means for conveying their wounded down.ta the beach; but the French had for this purpose a large number of eaeolets, sug gested to them by their experience in Algeria. Each of these consists of two easy-chairs, slung in panniers across the back of a mule; and it is accordingly available along tracks where no wheel-carriage could pass. These caeolets have since been adopted iu the English army, as well as improved hand-litters, wheeled-litters or barrows, and ambu lance wagons on a more modern model than those of Smith and Guthrie, but having the same general character. The American war, the wars of 1866 and '70, and above all, the growth of volunteer aid societies under the influence of the Geneva convention of 1866 (which gave to the 'wounded and their attendants the privileges of neutrality), have largely developed the A. equipments of every European army. Every international ex hibition now contains an immense number of designs for the safe transport of the wounded. The most remarkable step taken in this direction has been the organization of railway ambulances. Trains of carriages either built for the purpose, or adapted from the ordinary rolling-stock, can now be fitted up as moving hospitals, with their staff of surgeons and attendants; and by means of these railway ambulances the wounded . can be safely and rapidly removed from the incurnbered field hospitals to the permanent, hospitals of the great cities of their own country. All the fittings for thus adapting railway trains to hospital purposes are now kept permanently in store in many of the countries of the continent.