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| A two-wheeled ambulance. |
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of the tent, about twenty inches apart.
If boards were wanting, two good-sized poles were cut and used instead.
Between these was the passage for the surgeons and nurses.
Behind the boards or poles a filling of straw or fine boughs was made and covered with blankets.
On these latter could be placed twenty patients, ten on either side; but they were crowded.
When six single cots were put in one of these tents, three on each side, ample space was afforded to pass among them.
In the latter part of 1861, the government, realizing its pressing needs, began to build general hospitals for the comfort
and accommodation of its increasing thousands of sick and wounded, continuing to build, as the needs increased, to the very last year of the war, when they numbered two hundred and five.
Before the civil war, the government had never been supplied with carriages to convey the sick and wounded.
Only two years before, a board, appointed by the secretary of war, had adopted for experiment a four-wheeled and a two-wheeled carriage.
The four-wheeled vehicle was tried in an expedition sent into New Mexico, and was favorably reported on; the two-wheeled was never tested, but was judged to be the best adapted to badly wounded men
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