Emergency medical services have become a method relied upon for timely transportation and treatment of the injured during the twentieth century, but the modern rescue squad did not become a reality until shortly before this time. The idea of a specially trained group of people who could initiate immediate treatment to the wounded and deliver them to safety originated during Napoleon's rule, when his surgeon Dominique Jean Larrey, directed the Grand Armee to develop mobile field hospitals, or ambulances volantes (flying ambulances), in addition to a corps of trained and equipped soldiers to aid those on the battlefield. Before Larrey's initiative in the 1790s, wounded soldiers were either left amid the fighting until the combat ended or their comrades would carry them to the rear lines. The Battle of Solferino in 1859, which wounded and killed 40,000 French, Italian, and Austrian soldiers, led Swiss businessman Jean...