A hero to most and controversial to some, Dr. Norman Bethune saved lives in World War I, in the Spanish Civil War, in Canada’s remote lumbercamps, and in Mao Zedong’s China where he became known by the Chinese as Bai Quien, a synonym for selflessness and medical excellence. Today, Bethune is revered in his native Canada.
I’m told that if you you want to brag about how good your doctor is in China, you say that he is “a Bethune”. This no doubt gives great satisfaction to my Nova Scotian medical colleagues Drs. Drew and Graeme Bethune, but the Bethune to whom the expression refers is actually their distant cousin Dr. Henry Norman Bethune. Like his cousin Drew, Dr. Norman Bethune was a thoracic surgeon with the added distinction of being the only non-Chinese hero of that country’s communist revolution and the inventor of what eventually became called a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital or MASH unit.
Dr. Norman Bethune
Scion of a prominent Scottish Canadian family, Bethune’s ancestors included Reverend John Bethune, who founded the first Presbyterian Church in Montreal; Angus Bethune who was a chief factor of the Hudson’s Bay Company; and Angus’ grandfather (also a Dr. Norman Bethune), who founded what eventually became the University of Toronto Medical School.
Born in Gravenhurst, Ontario in 1890, Bethune, as expected, went on to pursue higher education at the University of Toronto. His education was interrupted twice, once in 1911 when he spent a year with Frontier College teaching literacy to lumberjacks and miners in remote locations, and again in 1914 when he volunteered as a stretcher-bearer in France during the First World War.
Dr. Norman Bethune. Victoria Harbour Lumber Co., Martin's camp. Dr. Bethune is standing straddle legs with hands on hips, 1911 Lake Ontario
After being wounded by shrapnel, he returned to Canada and finished his medical degree at the University of Toronto in 1916. After joining the Royal Navy and furthering his education in Great Britain, he met a nubile young beauty named Frances Penny, who he married in 1923. Blowing her entire inheritance during a one-year tour of Europe, the couple returned to North America where Bethune set up practice in Detroit. However, he developed tuberculosis (TB) in 1926 and, believing he was dying, sent Frances packing back to Europe, insisting that she divorce him.
Bethune was admitted to the Trudeau Sanitorium in New York for the rest therapy typical of the day. Perusing the medical journals of his day, he read of a promising new therapy for TB called pneumothorax. This involved collapsing the lung to rest it and allow it to heal. Some say that Bethune performed the procedure on himself. In any event he made a thorough recovery as a result of this novel technique.
While at the Trudeau Sanitorium, Bethune also had time to draw a series of murals. (These disappeared and family sources tell me they believe former U.S. president Richard Nixon purloined these and gave them to the Chinese as a gift while trying to open diplomatic relations with that country).
Having recovered Bethune begged Frances to come back and though at first she refused, they eventually remarried in 1929. The relationship proved a stormy one and they were divorced once again for the final time in 1933.
Bethune subsequently moved to Montreal to study thoracic surgery at the Royal Victoria Hospital, associated with McGill University. While there he invented the Bethune Rib Shears, an instrument still used today by thoracic surgeons.
During the 1930s, he also became an advocate of socialized medicine and often treated the destitute free of charge. After Bethune visited the Soviet Union in 1935, he became an ardent communist, a move not popular with his colleagues. His noted taste for fine living also caused some to criticize him Bethune as being somewhat of a hypocrite.
In 1936 Bethune joined the Spanish Civil War, becoming part of the Canadian Medical Unit in Madrid. He observed that many casualties bled to death, perishing from so-called hypovolemic shock, often with fairly minor wounds, because of delay in evacuation from the scene of battle. This prompted him to round up donors and form mobile blood transfusion units. Bethune later set up mobile medical units that were the precursors of the so called MASH units (as an interesting aside, Canadian actor Donald Sutherland was later to portray both Norman Bethune in the film Bethune and “Hawkeye” Pierce in Robert Altman’s film M*A*S*H).
Dr. Norman Bethune and his mobile medical (MASH) unit during the Spanish Civil War
Bethune left Spain in 1937, ostensibly to do a speaking tour to raise money for the anti-fascist forces in Spain, though recent evidence suggests he may have been expelled by the communists due to a dubious liaison with a woman thought to have been a Nazi spy.
In 1938, Bethune traveled to China to aid Mao Zedong’s efforts to fight off Japanese invaders. He was stationed with China’s Eighth Route Army in 1939 and distinguished himself for his tireless efforts to care for wounded, both Chinese and Japanese. While at first distrusted as a foreigner, Bethune eventually became beloved by the Chinese troops. Working 20 hour days and even giving his own food to his patients, his selflessness led the soldiers from mistrust to adoration. “How can we lose when Bethune is with us” became a rallying cry of the Eighth Army.
Dr. Norman Bethune in China
Unfortunately, Bethune cut himself while operating on a patient in 1939. His wound subsequently became infected and he died of septicemia (“blood poisoning”). Mourned by his Chinese comrades and subsequently memorialized in a tract by Mao Zedong entitled “In Praise of Norman Bethune”, he became a household name in China; his name, Bai Quien was a synonym for selflessness and medical excellence.
Every school child learned of this Canadian hero, and school and universities in China were name for him during a time period when few Canadians had ever heard his name. Statues of Bai Quien now grace many locations in China, and eventually, after Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau’s visit to China in 1973, Bethune gained the recognition in Canada that he so richly merited. Bethune’s childhood home in Gravenhurst, Ontario is now a National Historic Site, operated by Parks Canada.
Photo Credits
Dr. Norman Bethune. Photographer Unknown.
Dr. Norman Bethune. Victoria Harbour Lumber Co., Martin’s camp. Dr. Bethune is standing straddle legs with hands on hips, 1911 Lake Ontario. Wikimedia Commons.
Dr. Norman Bethune and his mobile medical (MASH) unit during the Spanish Civil War. Photographer unknown.
Dr. Norman Bethune performing surgery in an unused Buddhist temple in central Hopei, China, Spring 1939. National Film Board / Library and Archives Canada / PA-114795.
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