Norman Bethune

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Dr. Henry Norman Bethune

Dr Norman Bethune 1922
Born March 3, 1890
Gravenhurst, Ontario, Canada
Died November 12, 1939 (aged 49)
China
Profession Physician, Surgeon
Institutions McGill University, Montreal
Royal Victoria Hospital
Known for Developing mobile medical units, surgical instruments and a method for transporting blood for transfusions
Education University of Toronto

Henry Norman Bethune (March 3, 1890 – November 12, 1939) was a Canadian physician, medical innovator, and humanitarian.

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[edit] Biography

Bethune, a national hero in China, was born in Gravenhurst, Ontario, Canada. He was the son of a Presbyterian minister Rev. Malcolm Bethune and his wife Elizabeth. His grandfather, Norman Bethune Sr. was also a noted Canadian physician and co-founder in the 1850s of Trinity College Medical School which was later absorbed by the University of Toronto. Two other ancestors of note were his great grandfather Angus Bethune who rose to become partner in the fur trading North West Company and the grand patriarch of the family, Rev. John Bethune, who came over to North America from Scotland in the 1770s. In North Carolina Rev. John Bethune found that he opposed American independence from Britain. This led to his departure for Canada where as a United Empire Loyalist he founded the first Presbyterian church of Montreal and subsequently of Upper Canada, at Williamstown near Cornwall.

He attended Owen Sound Collegiate in Owen Sound, Ontario, now known as Owen Sound Collegiate And Vocational Institute. He graduated from OSCVI in 1907, four years ahead of William Avery "Billy" Bishop. Both names are inscribed on the School's Great War Memorial.

The young Norman Bethune enrolled at the University of Toronto in September 1909 and then worked for a year as a labourer-teacher with Frontier College. In 1915 he joined the No.2 Field Ambulance in France, where, as a stretcher-bearer, he was hit by shrapnel and spent three months recovering in an English hospital. The injury allowed him to return to Toronto to complete an accelerated medical degree by December 1916. Bethune's first private medical practice was in Detroit, Michigan where he contracted tuberculosis from working with the poor. He sought treatment at the Trudeau Sanatorium in upstate New York, and believing he was dying, insisted upon radical thoracic surgery which saved his life. Recuperated, he joined the famous Edward Archibald at McGill University in Montreal. He perfected his skills in thoracic surgery at the Royal Victoria Hospital where he also taught. Bethune was an early proponent of universal health care, the success of which he observed during a visit to the Soviet Union. As a concerned doctor in Montreal during the dirty thirties, Bethune frequently sought out the poor and gave them free medical care.

Fearing the onslaught of fascism, he travelled to Spain (1936-1937) where he assisted the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War and to China (1938-1939), aiding the Chinese in their war with Japan, in both cases performing battlefield surgical operations on war casualties.

Bethune's work in Spain in developing mobile medical units was the model for the later development of Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (MASH) units. The need to provide blood transfusions in a battlefield led him to develop the first practical method for transporting blood. In China, he worked with carpenters and blacksmiths to forge new surgical tools, and established training for doctors, nurses and orderlies. He redesigned packing containers to serve as operating tables.[1] He treated wounded Japanese prisoners.[2]

Bethune died on November 12, 1939, of blood poisoning from a cut he received when performing surgery, while with the Communist Party of China's Eighth Route Army in the midst of the Second Sino-Japanese War.

[edit] Motivations

Canadian Blood Transfusion Unit which operated during the Spanish Civil War. Dr Norman Bethune is at the right. ca. 1936 - 1937 / Spain
Canadian Blood Transfusion Unit which operated during the Spanish Civil War. Dr Norman Bethune is at the right. ca. 1936 - 1937 / Spain

The Communist Party of Canada (CPC) asserts that Bethune, who joined the party in 1935, acted out of devotion to the Chinese socialist movement. Some in the West, however, have been highly skeptical to the notion and generally believe the doctor's motivation was exclusively based on humanitarian considerations. The fact remains that Bethune went to Spain soon after joining the Communist Party of Canada to help in the struggle for democracy and against totalitarian fascism, and then went to China to help the Communists against Japanese imperialism. It is also noted in his most recent biography, The Politics of Passion, by Larry Hannant, that he specifically refused to work under Chiang Kai Shek's Nationalist government and insisted on helping the Chinese Communists instead......

[edit] Memory

Virtually unknown in his homeland during his lifetime, Bethune finally received international recognition when Chairman Mao Zedong of the People's Republic of China published his essay entitled In Memory of Norman Bethune (in Chinese: 紀念白求恩), which documented the final months of the doctor's life in China. Almost the entire Chinese population know about the essay which has become required reading in China's elementary schools.[citation needed] Mao concluded in that essay: "We must all learn the spirit of absolute selflessness from him. With this spirit everyone can be very helpful to each other. A man's ability may be great or small, but if he has this spirit, he is already noble-minded and pure, a man of moral integrity and above vulgar interests, a man who is of value to the people."

Bethune is one of the few Westerners to whom China has dedicated statues, of which many in his honour have been erected throughout the country. He is buried in the Revolutionary Martyrs' Cemetery Shijiazhuang, Hebei Province, China, where his tomb and memorial hall lie opposite the tomb of Dwarkanath Kotnis, an Indian doctor also honoured for his humanitarian contribution to the Chinese. One of the three honoured in this memorial is the Hero of the Academy Award winning film, Chariots of Fire, Reverend Eric Liddell of Scotland. He died while incarcerated in a Japanese prisoner of war camp in Shandong Province.

Elsewhere in China Bethune University of Medical Sciences in Changchun, Jilin Province, is named after him. Similarly his memory is held dear to students and staff at three institutions in Shijiazhuang namely, Bethune Military Medical College, Bethune Specialized Medical College and Bethune International Peace Hospital.

Bethune Memorial House
Bethune Memorial House

In Canada Bethune College at York University, and Dr Norman Bethune Collegiate Institute (a secondary school) in Scarborough, Ontario, are named after him.

Bethune Memorial House Visitor Centre in Gravenhust
Bethune Memorial House Visitor Centre in Gravenhust

The Government of Canada purchased the manse in which he was born in Gravenhurst in 1973 following the visit of Prime Minister Trudeau to China. The year previous Dr Bethune had been declared a Person of National Historic Significance. In 1976 the restored building was opened to the public as Bethune Memorial House. The house is operated as a National Historic Site of Canada by Parks Canada. In August 2002, then Governor General Adrienne Clarkson, who has Chinese ancestry, visited the house. On that same occasion she unveiled a bronze statue of him erected by the Town of Gravenhurst. It stands proudly in front of the Opera House on the main street of the community.

Statue of Bethune in Montreal
Statue of Bethune in Montreal

Montreal created a public square and erected a statue in his honour, near Guy-Concordia metro station. As of November 2007, the square is under reconfiguration and the statue has been removed for restoration.[3]

Bethune improved upon a number of surgical instruments. His most famous instrument was the "Bethune Rib Shears" [2].

Dr Bethune (Chinese: 白求恩大夫), One of the most successful Chinese movies was made in 1964 in memory of him, in which Gerald Tannebaum (traditional Chinese: 譚寧邦; simplified Chinese: 谭宁邦; pinyin: Tán Níngbāng), an American humanitarian, played Bethune.

Donald Sutherland played Bethune in two biographical films: Bethune (1977), made for television on a low budget, and Bethune: The Making of a Hero (1990). The latter was a co-production of Telefilm Canada, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, FR3 TV France and China Film Co-production.

In March 1990, to commemorate the centenary of his birth, Canada and China each issued two postage stamps of the same design in his honour.

In 1998, he was inducted into the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame located in London, Ontario.

In the CBC's The Greatest Canadian program in 2004, he was voted the 26th Greatest Canadian by viewers. In 2006 China Central Television produced a 20-part drama series, Dr Norman Bethune, documenting his life, which with a budget of Yuan 30 million (US$3.75 million) was the most expensive Chinese TV series to date.[4]

The 2006 novel The Communist's Daughter, by Dennis Bock, is a fictionalized account of Bethune's life.

The book of short stories, "Cottage Gothic", by Martin Avery, contains fictionalized accounts of Bethune's life, particularly in the story "Chinese Gold", which also appeared in Best Canadian Stories. Both books were published by Oberon Press.

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[edit] See also

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[edit] References

  1. ^ [1] Alexander, C A, New York-tidewater chapters' history of military medicine award: The military odyssey of Norman Bethune, Military Medicine, April 1999
  2. ^ Wounds, 1939
  3. ^ Allan Hustak. Statue of Bethune getting new home. The Gazette, Montreal. Retrieved on December 3, 2007.
  4. ^ Xinhua. Sixty-seven years on, Canadian idealist moves China again. People's Daily Online. Retrieved on September 1, 2006.

[edit] External links