A field hospital is a large mobile medical unit that temporarily takes care of casualties on-site before they can be safely transported to more permanent hospital facilities. This term is used overwhelmingly with reference to military situations, but may also be used in times of disaster. The concept was inherited from the battlefield (such as the Mobile Army Surgical Hospital or MASH), and is now applied in case of disasters or major accidents, as well as with traditional Military medicine.
A field hospital is a medical staff with a mobile medical kit and, often, a wide tent-like shelter (at times an inflatable structure in modern usage) so that it can be readily set up near the source of the casualties. In an urban environment, the field hospital is often established in an easily accessible and highly visible building (such as a restaurant, school, and so on). In case of an airborne structure, the mobile medical kit is often placed in normalized container; the container itself is then used as shelter.
In modern laws of war, such as the 1949 Geneva Conventions, include prohibitions on attacking doctors, ambulances, hospital ships, or field hospitals buildings displaying a Red Cross, a Red Crescent or other emblem related to the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement. In the photo at right, some structures bear the Red Cross, while others do not and are fair targets to hostile attack.
Famous quotes containing the words field and/or hospital:
“Swift blazing flag of the regiment,
Eagle with crest of red and gold,
These men were born to drill and die.
Point for them the virtue of slaughter,
Make plain to them the excellence of killing
And a field where a thousand corpses lie.”
—Stephen Crane (1871–1900)
“Radio put technology into storytelling and made it sick. TV killed it. Then you were locked into somebody else’s sighting of that story. You no longer had the benefit of making that picture for yourself, using your imagination. Storytelling brings back that humanness that we have lost with TV. You talk to children and they don’t hear you. They are television addicts. Mamas bring them home from the hospital and drag them up in front of the set and the great stare-out begins.”
—Jackie Torrence (b. 1944)