UNDERTAKER DROVE FIRST AMBULANCE; EMERGENCY SERVICE CHANGES DRASTICALLY

SOUTHEAST MISSOURI UNDERTAKING CO. BROUGHT THE FIRST AMBULANCE TO CITY.

When Don Louis Lorimier founded Cape Girardeau, doctors were far and few between on the western frontier.

At Lorimier's trading post village, each family took care of its own health-care needs, using man-made medicines and an assortment of herbs and simple cures passed on to them by local Indians. Midwives assisted in childbirth. Those who become seriously ill or injured usually did not survive.

As the town grew, doctors moved into the city, treating patients in their homes or making house calls on horseback or in horse-drawn buggies. Before long the town realized there was a need for a hospital to care for the sick and injured.

The first hospital in Southeast Missouri was established in September 1875, when Father Schmidt, pastor at St. Mary's Catholic Church, asked an order of nuns to send three sisters to Cape Girardeau to establish a hospital. In 1879 they erected St. Francis hospital on the northwest corner of Sprigg and William. The charge for a week's stay in the hospital was $3.

As the city grew and prospered, so did its health needs. A decision was made to build a new-and-larger St. Francis hospital at the corner of Good Hope and Pacific. The building was dedicated in 1914. In 1939, a wing was added to the west side of the building, enlarging the facility to 115 beds.

In 1923 planning began for a second, non-sectarian hospital that was completed on Jan. 8, 1928. From that single building, Southeast Missouri Hospital has grown. It's latest addition is under way on Lacey Street.

In 1971 a group of local physicians joined to build Doctors' Park on Mount Auburn Road. It too has undergone significant growth.

As Cape Girardeau became known as a medical-care center, a decision was made to build a new hospital. In 1975 the new St. Francis Medical Center was opened on Gordonville Road.

With construction of hospitals came the need for a way to transport patients. In September 1911, Martin G. Lorberg of the Southeast Missouri Undertaking Co. brought the first ambulance to Cape Girardeau. It was a horse-drawn vehicle pulled by two horses.

The ambulance closely resembled horse-drawn hearses of the period. There was no medical equipment on the ambulance; its only function was to transport patients to hospitals.

Although the ambulance made calls throughout the city, many of its trips were to the Frisco railroad station to transport patients that arrived by train from southern parts of Missouri. The Lorberg ambulance was the first ambulance service between St. Louis and Memphis.

The horse-drawn ambulance was eventually replaced by gasoline-powered vehicles. In most communities, including Cape Girardeau, funeral homes provided the ambulance service as a service.

In the early days they used a hearse equipped with a cot, an oxygen mask and tank of oxygen. Ambulance personnel most often employees of the funeral home usually had basic or advanced first-aid training from the American Red Cross. The Cape Girardeau Fire Department was also called frequently to emergencies for a respirator.

Such services as emergency trauma care at the scene and 24-hour hospital emergency rooms equipped with state-of-the-art lifesaving equipment didn't exist in the 1950s.

The Vietnam War forever changed the country's emergency medical care in the 1960s. There then was prompt emergency medical treatment on the battlefield by trained, trauma personnel, followed by a quick helicopter ride back to a field hospital. Many lives were saved, and the point was not lost on the doctors, nurses and medics who served in Vietnam.

In the late 1960s, a nationwide effort was begun to upgrade the emergency health-care system in the United States, using techniques that had proven effective in Vietnam. At about the same time, a group of people began an effort to upgrade emergency medical services in Cape Girardeau.

The group included Drs. C.P. McGinty, Raymond Ritter Sr. and the late John Crowe; Gene Huckstep and George Rouse, who, with his wife and three sons, had already started the first private ambulance service in this part of the state in 1968.

Their efforts led to Senate Bill 57, which mandated training standards and licensing of providers of emergency medical care, and standards for the construction and equipping of ambulances.

"Before that law was passed, anybody with an old station wagon, rusty cart and a bottle of oxygen could start an ambulance service," Rouse recalled. "Under Senate Bill 57, anyone in the ambulance business - public, private, volunteer or funeral home - had to be trained and licensed to operate in the state."

McGinty recalled there was a lot of opposition toward upgrading emergency services. "We traveled to Jefferson City many times to testify on the bill," McGinty said. "And, after it was approved in 1975, we had to come back and talk the local hospital administrators into opening 24-hour, staffed emergency rooms to care for the patients these ambulances were bringing in."

Huckstep said that's how he got on the St. Francis Medical Center Board of Directors. "I was telling Dr. Ritter one day about the fact that neither hospital in Cape had a 24-hour staffed emergency room," Huckstep said. "Dr. Ritter told me, `Why don't you come on our board and do something about it? So I joined the board, and they gave us exactly what we wanted: a 24-hour, fully-trained, physician-staffed emergency room."

At about the same time, Huckstep was providing an emergency extrication service on both sides of the Mississippi River that responded to vehicle collisions and other serious accidents. The service, which local medical officials credit with saving many lives, is now handled by the Cape Girardeau Fire Department, which responds to extrication calls in all parts of the county.

McGinty, Ritter, Crowe and Rouse worked closely with other local physicians and the two hospitals to set up a series of classes to train emergency medical technicians. Today, EMT and paramedic training courses are taught regularly at the Cape Girardeau Vocational-Technical School and at other area schools.

Since the mid-1970s, the development and growth of emergency health care in the Cape Girardeau area has been phenomenal. The ambulance service has grown from one hearse and five employees to a fleet of basic and advanced life-support ambulances with trained EMTs and paramedics.

Both hospitals have continued to upgrade their emergency rooms. The additions of two air ambulance services, Life Beat and Air Evac, have helped save countless lives.

Today, anyone can dial 911, or a law enforcement agency can make a radio request, for a ground or air ambulance that can provide on-the-scene medical care and fast transport to a hospital emergency room.