Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine - Sawbones: The Heartmobile

Episode Date: June 24, 2025

It used to be that if you needed to get to the hospital quickly, you would call the herse – because it had the space to transport a person who was lying down. Well, all of that changed in Columbus, OH, with the Heartmobile, known as the first ambulance. Dr. Sydnee and Justin talk about its development, implementation, and the thrilling end of its ambulatory adventures.Music: "Medicines" by The Taxpayers https://taxpayers.bandcamp.com/Transgender Law Center: https://transgenderlawcenter.org/

Sawbones is a show about medical history, and nothing the hosts say should be taken as medical advice or opinion. It's for fun. Can't you just have fun for an hour and not try to diagnose your mystery boil? We think you've earned it. Just sit back, relax, Columbus, and enjoy a moment of distraction from that weird growth. You're worth it! One, two, one, two, three, four. ["The Medicine's The Medicine's The S-Galant Macomb"] Two, three, we came across a pharmacy with its windows blasted out. We pushed on through the broken glass. And had ourselves a look around. The medicines, the medicines,

that escalate McCombs for the mouth. Hello everybody and welcome to Sawbones, a marital tour of misguided medicine. I'm your co-host, Justin McElroy. And I'm Sydney McElroy. Oh man. Thank you. Thank you.

It is really, really interesting that you guys cheered so loud for Sydney. Just interesting. Go ahead. Sorry. That's for you. No, no, no. That's for you. Somebody just, it was just walking in the back, just rose their fist like it was for them

though. Cheers to you. Whoever just did that is a good silhouette. I got a good laugh out of that. Thank you. Cheers to all of us. We're here back in the home of COSI. Yeah.

That's, that's interesting. COSI is Yeah. Oh. That's interesting. COSI is such an interesting place, isn't it? And you know what's really interesting that you mentioned COSI? It's like every word you're saying tonight is just so interesting to me. And I think I know, Paul, can you just show? That's right.

That's the new Huntington Quarterly issue of the most interesting people. And who is that? Yes. Okay. Yeah, thank you. I wanted to save time because I was showing it to everybody backstage individually

and I thought, here, let me save some time. I'll just show it to everybody at the same time. I'm very proud. So, I just wanted to show you that because at the same time. I'm very proud. So there, I just wanted to show you that because I'm proud of Sydney. That's all. I just think it's a shame they wasted pages on other people. You know what I mean? Just like one big Sydney issue. That's what I demand. I appreciate that. Thank you, honey. Thank you. I will say, and I love Huntington. We were born in Huntington.

I grew up in Huntington. I still live in Huntington, so clearly I love Huntington. I am just one of the most interesting people in Huntington. So like that, it's good to keep yourself humble, you know, in Huntington. You know, I know some other people who live in Huntington. They also do it every year. So like there's a whole new crop of people every year. I haven't been on it.

I don't think, and I am in Huntington too, if you think about it. To be fair, that's Huntington Quarterly is that magazine. And your dad writes an article every issue in that. Yeah, I didn't take a picture of dad's like closing article. Every issue. It's even more embarrassing that I haven't been in it now. It's kind of a little bit shameful now that I think about it. But hey, but you know what? We're thrilled to be here. We're Huntingtonians at heart and always will be, but if you want to see a concert, you're going to Columbus. That's the Huntington motto. That's right. You want to see a concert, you want to go to a beer hotel,

you're going to Columbus. You want to go to a children's science museum, closest ones in Columbus. You know what, it's funny, COSI was actually, part of the reason we wanted to found the Huntington Children's Museum, just because I love COSI so much, because it's the best.

It's the best. And we checked out Otherworld today, which was incredible. Oh, we went to Otherworld, that was cool. Incredible, yeah, incredible.. Yeah. So whenever we tour, we haven't toured in a long time. Sawbones, you have, but Sawbones hasn't. And whenever we do, we like to try to find something related to the area to talk about. And my first thought, which was not my best thought, was, isn't Wendy's from Columbus? And I love Wendy's. It's my favorite fast food restaurant.

The junior bacon cheeseburger is, yeah. Nothing beats it. It is the perfect, it is what, that's what you need. If you need a fast food hamburger, you need a junior bacon cheeseburger. Yeah. Did you all tear down Wendy's or is it still up? It's gone.

It used to be near the old Coastside, right? The old Coastside spot is where the first Wendy's was. This is how we... I don't have a joke. This is very... Just something I remember because I'm old. That's all. This is very Huntington talk though.

Like, oh yeah, that's where the old Coastside... Yeah, it used to be something. It used to be the Mac and Dave's. I remember that place. No, so I was going to talk about... I was like, well, I that's where the old coast side, that's the old, that used to be the McEndaves, I remember that place. No, so I was gonna talk about, I was like, well I should talk about Wendy's, I'm not gonna talk about Wendy's, so let me just get that out there.

Because I was like, oh, what could I talk about medical history plus fast food restaurant, that's not gonna be pleasant. No thanks. You're not gonna wanna hear about that, because immediately I was like, didn't they have an E. coli thing? I think they had, like every fast food restaurant has had like an E. coli thing.

It's almost weird if you haven't had one. It's like, what are you hiding? You know what I mean? Right. And then I had this thought like, well, that's not a fun, that's not fun of a live episode. And then what if, and I don't know, you all can tell me this, if you're from Columbus, do you regard Wendy's the way that like, when we think of our like beloved local eateries, like the local spots that like, if you know, you know, is Wendy's

that in Columbus? Okay, well, nevermind. That was the guys. I've been asking audiences questions for a long time. That is the most united I have ever heard. And y'all, I have asked people in Michigan how they feel about Ohio, and that is still the most unified

I have ever heard an audience in a sentiment. Is there Wendy's resentment? That's what I feel like. You're like, no. Okay, let's leave this here. This is fascinating. Well, maybe I should have talked about E. Coli at Wendy's. I was pitching this idea to Justin. I was like, we could talk about this one major E. Coli outbreak tied to a Wendy's. It was like in their romaine lettuce there. And I mean, it's great because nobody died.

So it's a good one to talk about. And I feel like if that's your number one sales pitch, it's like, nobody died though. So it's a good one. So that wasn't good. So we're not going to talk about that. So as I was like going through, what are the things about Columbus?

I mean, you've got a lot of like great medical institutions here and universities and a lot of academia that we could dig into. You've got ten sister cities. Did you know that? Columbus has ten sister cities? I read every article. I know so much about Columbus, but then I found something that hit close to home and it's called the Heart Mobile. So I want to talk about, if you haven't heard about it, Columbus's Heart Mobile. And I'm excited because nobody's cheering, so it makes me think you haven't. That's better. You haven't heard of the heart mobile.

This was close to home for me because very recently, Justin and I made a purchase. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Do you want to talk about what we bought? It's still very ill-advised, but Sydney has had it in her head that she's gonna branch out from the population of people experiencing homelessness in Huntington

and start spreading out to other counties. So she found a bus. She found a bus on Facebook. She found a bus on Facebook Marketplace that we went and bought in Hurricane. No it was in Salt Rock. You know Salt Rock. You go out past the last Billy Bob's that still exists. You don't want to get to Hurricane. You know, you know Salt Rock. It's spelled Hurricane but pronounced Hurricane. Hurricane. And so we

bought, it's like it's a one of the shorter school buses that had been already converted into a camper by these guys and it's painted kind of purple. And I'm gonna do medical outreach in it. Yeah. So we're trying to figure that out. That, hey, you should know that that sounds very nice, but you are not the person whose house

it is parked outside and has been for several weeks. My mom called it Grimace once and now it's Grimace. Now it's Grimace, my medical bus. Okay so I'm gonna tell you about the Heart Mobile, your very own Columbus Grimace. It's not purple though so that's okay that's okay well we will forgive that. So we have done a whole Sawbones before on the history of ambulances. That's a very specific idea, right? Like people are sick somewhere,

we need to get them to the place where the medical care, the doctors and everything are. How do we transport them? And a lot of the origins of that, as we've talked about before, came from like wartime. How do we get people from the battlefield to somewhere where they can get to medical care and specifically like is there stuff that we could do in the field and that was really the origin of the idea

of an ambulance like instead of just picking somebody up throwing them in a car and driving them to medical care is there more that we could do out in the field and a lot of the original care came from firefighters, from fire departments, because they would send people to the scene of a fire and either the firefighters or the civilians would need care during the fire. Oh, there's Sydney's bus in case everyone... Well, there's my school bus. I didn't expect Grimace to be part of it. No, but there's a futon in it

and I got to get the futon out before I can take care of people. If you go into a place to get a shot and you see a futon, leave. Don't stay there. Go somewhere else to get the shot. Right? Yeah. Like I can't say like, come into my school bus, I have a futon. Yes, the bunk beds cover the emergency exit. We're working on it. Yeah, it's a work in progress. The medicines, the medicines that escalate my carbs for the mouth.

So, let's go back. We're talking about ambulances, specifically in Columbus. In 1931, we're talking about the Columbus Fire Department. They added something called a lion's palm motor, which was like a resuscitator, an early days sort of like respiration, like ventilator kind of device. They added something like that to a vehicle that they could take out into the field. And those were, that was the first attempt to,

if somebody is injured, severely injured out in the field, instead of just like throwing them in somewhere and taking them out, let's do something about it right and this was very exciting and so they put this in there and they they started using it out in the field they got a report and I mean almost immediately afterwards of somebody who had been electrocuted out in the field so they took it out to the scene sadly it didn't necessarily work but we're not gonna dwell on that but hey good instincts huh but it made a lot of headlines people all heard about this It didn't necessarily work, but we're not gonna dwell on that. But. Hey, good instincts, huh?

But it made a lot of headlines. People all heard about this. Did you hear? They took this fancy machine way out in a car. They drove it to somebody. They took it out in the field and they tried to make them better out in the field. You know, the next time I'm hurt or sick or injured,

I think I'm gonna call the fire department. And so this really promoted this idea that, when you need somebody, when you're sick, you should call the fire department. That was where, those were the origins of that idea, where they will bring care to you instead of just taking you to the hospital. Okay.

And that was really exciting. So like Columbus was sort of leading the way. And there were other cities that were also starting to do this, but Columbus was already leading the way in like out of hospital emergency care as a way to improve outcomes. Because that was the big thing is that if somebody's severely injured, you know, there's a time factor, the faster you can get care to them, the faster you can, you know, ensure they're stable and maybe save their life. And so Columbus was kind of leading the way. It wasn't until the 60s though that we really started

to get this attention nationally on what could we do with emergency medical services. And a lot of this came with the idea that heart attacks were the leading cause of death. So we started thinking about heart disease and cardiovascular events, and isn't there more that we could be doing before somebody gets to the hospital? Wouldn't we improve outcomes

if those kinds of things happened? And at the time, a lot of our ambulances, so there were fire departments who had vehicles that could come. That wasn't standardized though. You wouldn't necessarily call the fire department no matter where you were. In a lot of cities, what you would call was a hearse. That wasn't standardized though. You wouldn't necessarily call the fire department no matter where you were.

In a lot of cities, what you would call was a hearse, a funeral home. I mean, and I don't mean that facetiously, they were the ambulances. I mean, you can put a laying down person in there. Why have two different laying down cars, right? No, literally, that was your ambulance. You called the funeral home

and they drove you to the hospital. I don't, I mean, this isn't, I'm not, I feel like this is like dark humor. No, this isn't dark humor. You would call the funeral home and they would send the hearse and they would take you to the hospital. They probably have a bit of a preamble though, right?

Like, listen, I'm sure this is freaking you out a little bit. You gotta understand. You won't definitely die. Definitely. No, I mean, I'm not saying they wouldn't wait outside. They're already there. Like it's wild to go back.

It's actually bad for the planet to go back to the funeral home and go back to the hospital. Think about it. Or somebody else, they're not picky. Like any. But no, that really was in a lot of communities, that was the best you could hope for. If somebody, I don't know, gets hit by a car or falls out of a tree, whatever, you would call the funeral home and they would drive...

Your cat got stuck in a tree, you would call a funeral home. No, I don't... It's true. I mean, I don't know, they may have. But so there really was this need. We know that heart disease is this big problem. We think that if we could do things out in the field, the hearses are not going to be the ticket.

These are not people equipped. Depressing everyone. Yes. Firefighters seem to have an idea, but we don't really have something. What is the missing piece? What is the vehicle? What is the thing that we're missing? And what really inspired people at that point

was a project that started in Belfast in Northern Ireland where they started creating these mobile heart, coronary care, mobile heart care units. And they were basically like these, they would call them flying squads, that would come to the site of some sort of, you know, you think somebody's having a heart attack, they're having chest pain, whatever, and they would actually give them some sort of care, whether it was resuscitating them with, you know, chest compressions or some kind of medication

or whatever they had available at the time, they were going to give them right there in a vehicle at the site instead of waiting until they got to the hospital. And this was really inspirational. And some of the doctors who got on board with this really quickly were again right here in Columbus. There were two doctors, Dr. James Warren and Dr. Richard Lewis, who are of Ohio State University hospitals, were watching what was happening in Belfast. Are they here? happening in Belfast. Are they here? That would have been something though, huh?

Okay, sorry. Probably not. I said it would have been something. I mean. So they had this idea, we need a vehicle. We need something. If we're going to go out into the community and provide care, it can just be like us in our neon I don't know whatever car. You think they had neon? Those are my first cars that's always what I think of you know a Dodge neon that's

probably what they had right. Oh like the car the neon okay sorry I thought you meant like their clothing. Us in our, they're dodging on to their ride. Us and our Corolla, like, coming up with like, pulling some paddles out of the back, like, hold on, let me get this out of the trunk. Like, we need something. Something. Right, we need a vehicle. What's hard is that they already had the hearse,

and if they just put the lights on the hearse, we're at Ecto-1, like we're there. You know what I mean? Like, we were so close. Well, they wanted something bigger and they really were thinking big. They were thinking like a big enough vehicle that we could have essentially

a whole coronary care unit in the back, like a huge exam table, like operating table is what you would think of the thing that they put in there. And all of the equipment that you would need to resuscitate somebody, almost like in an ER, right there in the back of this mobile unit. And so they actually got a grant from the Federal Highway Commission, and a couple different cities got it.

Columbus was just the first to jump on this and create something that they called the Heart Mobile. It was the first mobile coronary care unit in the United States was created right here in Columbus. yeah and the whole idea is that they would staff it with one of the cardiologists from Ohio State University and then they would also have firefighters on board and then together they would go to the site if they were called. I mean these are essentially we're seeing the beginning of paramedics. We're seeing the beginning of an ambulance with paramedics in it. They

did have a doctor initially that would help out. And the idea was we're gonna pilot this for a couple years. And it was a study. We're gonna see if the outcomes of the people that we go take care of out in the field improve if we take care to them before we get them to the hospital instead of waiting till they get to the hospital. And obviously it was a rousing success.

Like it was just, it was amazing. Because you're doing it earlier. Yeah, Justin. Before they're sicker. Because you're doing it earlier. That's fierce. And it was really easy. You would call the fire department

if there was, you know, somebody says, I'm having chest pain. You call the fire department, which a lot of people were already sort of, you know, predisposed to do because of this history in Columbus. I think that's why this caught on here so quickly is because the fire department had already been kind of unofficially providing this care out in the community.

And so people were sort of already programmed to do that. So they knew to call the fire department. The heart mobile, which actually we have a picture of the heart mobile. Paul, will you show our first? This is what the heart mobile looked like. I know, right? It's really cool. So, can you imagine this rolling up outside your house?

I'd be so excited. Except for the fact that you or your loved one was experiencing a severe cardiac event. Well, there is that. You probably are pretty excited about, just not the kind of excited you mean. So this was the Heartmobile as they created it. If it was housed in a building right next

to the hospital emergency room, this is called the Heart Shack. Ten roof, rusted. So what you would do is you'd have somebody on call in the hospital, one of the doctors, job that evening was to be on the heart mobile if it was called. I'm assuming they like spilled something earlier that day

or like missed a shift or something and they had to go stay in the heart shack as punishment. And if there was a call, then they would call the emergency room and say like, Paging the heart mobile doctor, get to the heart shack. It's time to go. I assume, you know what, in my fiction, the doctor's driving, probably not. They wouldn't let us drive. The doctor's probably in the back, but somebody would drive the heart mobile to the site of

the emergency. And again, so they did this the heart mobile to the site of the emergency. And again, so they did this for a couple years and then they published. This was very much supposed to be a study. So will this work? So they published all their results after two years. And again, the results were so compelling to the rest of the nation that this is a way to save lives. This is a way to improve outcomes if we bring care to people.

That it fundamentally changed the way we think about emergency medical services and ambulances and paramedics forever. The only changes are pretty quickly they realized that there were things, we don't necessarily need all these things. The heart mobile would go through several different iterations.

And they also figured out pretty quickly that they don't need doctors. I always tell the kids this, if we drive past the site of an accident or something, if an ambulance is already there, the girls will ask me, do you need to stop, mommy? And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. The experts are there.

They do not need a doctor. The people who they need are already there. And they realize that pretty quickly, is you really don't need a doctor on there. And this was great, because that was a barrier, right? There are only so many physicians, there are only so many cardiologists. I mean, initially they were only sending out cardiologists.

So that would be a big barrier to a smaller community hospital setting up a program like this. Well, now they're like, no, no, no, we can train firefighters, we can train EMTs, we can train people to do the care that's needed out in the community. And we don't need a cardiologist to do that. It lowers the cost too overall, if you don't want to staff with a physician all the time.

That's true, Justin. I like that you're always cost conscious with these sorts of endeavors. All dollars and cents with me. You know, it's interesting, I was thinking about you, when we were talking about how these would get out, I was wondering about like dispatching, like how would you get those calls out?

And it occurred to me that whole system kind of has to rise with this, you know what I mean? We have to build those sort of systems too. They aren't in place yet, so calling this would have to be a pretty specific local thing when it's just a test program like that. Yeah, and it was, but they published the results and it was really compelling.

So compelling that they immediately began improving upon it and the Heart Mobile in that original iteration was retired after really like two years because they just got better ambulances, things that looked more like what you would think of as an ambulance today and we continued to modify that into the ambulance that would arrive if you, I hope you don't, if you unfortunately had an emergency.

But what happened? This is the question to me, what happened to the HeartMobile? Because here's this cool thing, it's this amazing little quirky piece of medical history, and then it kind of became vestigial really quickly. So initially, there was some talk like, this is a great thing that we've created. We know we don't need it anymore, but we should save it.

But there really wasn't a big movement for that. People were like, I don't know, it's this big giant van. We should probably use it for something. So they retired it from emergency response in 1972. They took all of the EMS equipment out of it pretty quickly. And they actually changed it into like a recruiting station for the fire department. So they repainted the entire thing and they took it out into communities and tried to recruit people to be firefighters with it for a while.

So it served as that for several years. After that was done, they started the Columbus Fire Honor Guard started using it as a transport vehicle for a while. So it had kind of a third life as that. And then eventually it was given to the training division where it was used to transport recruits back and forth because it's a big van. You could put a lot of seats,

you could put a lot of people in it. And then around 1985, they said, I don't know what we're gonna do with this big van anymore. We don't need to take it out anywhere. We don't need to move anybody anywhere. It's the fate of all big vans eventually. I hate to think about it. There's so many Pixar movies about it,

but eventually every big van has to die. Go ahead, see. Well, I mean, it's true. It was in terrible shape. It had rusted, the paint had faded, the lights were hanging off of it. It was in bad shape. They just kind of let it.

They let it fall apart. And a lot of people didn't remember it. I mean, cause it really, it didn't serve for very long, right? The chances that you would encountered the heart mobile in its heyday were pretty slim. It was like two years. The chances that you'd see the next day are even slimmer. No disrespect to the great

cardiologists at Columbus. I hope you all appreciate a good ribbing. I'm usually the bummer in these episodes. So anyway, so here we have this big van that's this piece of medical history that is just sort of falling apart and they finally decide like, there's nothing, there were some people with the fire department who wanted to preserve it, but nobody had the money or the power to do that. You got to start selling little chunks of it in necklaces. That's what I...

They were going to put it up at a surplus auction. So then who knows what it was going to become, right? A surplus auction. Yeah. This is a surplus auction. So then who knows what it was going to become, right? A surplus auction. This is a true story. I read this and if I had the time to just go find the people involved with this story and do a deep dive, I am not a journalist. I wish I was because this is a fantastic story. So a few weeks before they're going to put this van up for auction, an anonymous tip was received at the Columbus Fire Department at Station 2. And the department historian received this call.

So that's lucky. That would be Robert Throckmorton. And he was told, he was told, if you want to save the heart mobile, now would be the time and that a gate quote, may be unlocked. If you want to get the heart mobile out of there. Columbus, nice! And that is exactly what happened. After hours, two firefighters drove to the station. They found a gate unlocked. They, I'll say it, stole it, right? They had to get a mechanic to jump start the heart mobile and they stole it.

Okay, here's what I'm thinking. Tom Hardy is both of the firefighters and also the voice of the bus. Now hear me out. So this is a great heist. I want to know all the people involved. I wish I could do just a history of interviewing everybody involved. So they stole the heart mobile or appropriated it is how they keep wording it in the history. They appropriated it.

We thought we saw a fire there. I don't know what to tell you. But I was playing tricks, but we thought it was a fire. So legally we had jurisdiction. They moved it around to different fire stations around Columbus to keep people guessing. Until like the 80s, they just kept moving it around. And then finally it landed at station 28.

And there were some people there who were like, we're really interested in trying to rebuild this thing. So they started working on rebuilding the engine. And I'm talking about like just people who know stuff about rebuilding fire trucks, who start, or fire, well fire trucks and then obviously these kinds of vehicles, started rebuilding this in their free time.

Like guys would just meet after work and get together and work on this heart mobile because they really believed it should be preserved and they really loved it. And so you can see Paul, we have another picture of in process, they were restoring it. It was, it took a lot of fundraising and cooperation. It took some detective work. They had to like track down where the different components, if they could find

them, that had been inside the HeartMobile ended up. And there were like, they found the original EKG machine was owned by a local physician who was using it as a coffee table. The noise I just... The noise I heard you nerds make when she was like the EKG machine was like, oh, ah. They got the original clock. And then there were a lot of things that they just had to kind of find like this would be appropriate for the time period. Paul, will you show the next... Yeah, and you can see this is what the inside of it looks like now. They had to rebuild that exam table

that's an original from the time period. And that is exactly what it would have looked like if it showed up. I mean, you can see this is pretty state of the art for, I mean, an ambulance usually doesn't have all of this space to do all of this. It was huge. It looks, you know, it's funny.

And the time period kind of lines up. It looks like how airplanes used to look. Like when time period kind of lines up, it looks like how airplanes used to look, like when we would think about we need this much space to do this. Like you got to be able to walk around, you got to have room for a piano, otherwise what are you doing? You can see there's the original clock, there's the original EKG and defibrillator, all of this was right there in the wall.

So if they pulled up, they could go ahead and do an EKG, they could do defibrillation if your heart stopped. What's our next? There you go. There's oxygen masks and regulators. I mean, a really well-equipped vehicle, especially for the time. And I think there's about one more. It looks like the machine's in Willy Wonka and the chocolate factory, honestly. I love this. There's the tape recorder for our EKG. We don't usually do this now. There's your tape recorder for your EKG transmission so you can bring that to the hospital and have people read that. So all of that was inside the Heart Mobile and now it is restored. And what's really cool is if you want to see this, if you want

to see the Heart Mobile, you can visit it now at the Central Ohio Fire Museum, which is like 0.3 miles from here. It's like down the street. There it is. Send us your pictures of you with the heart mode, BL. I know. So you can visit it. It's super close. I couldn't convince the girls to do that

over other world today. I was like, can we come see this big van that has old medical equipment in it, please? No dice. Hey Columbus, thank you so much for being here with us. Thanks for rebuilding that cool bus. Thanks for being so kind to us. Thanks to the taxpayers for using their song,

Medicine is the intro and outro of our program. And thanks to you for listening. That's going to do it for us. Until next time, my name is Justin McEl outro of our program. And thanks to you for listening. That's gonna do it for us. Until next time, my name is Justin McElroy. I'm Sydney McElroy. And as always, don't drill a hole in your head. Yeah! Yeah!

Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!

Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! All right! Yeah! Yeah! Alright!

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