Henry Norman Bethune (; March 4, 1890 – November 12, 1939; ) was a Canadian thoracic surgeon, early advocate of universal health care, and member of the Communist Party of Canada. Bethune came to international prominence first for his service as a frontline trauma surgeon supporting the Republican government during the Spanish Civil War, and later supporting the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) Eighth Route Army during the Second Sino-Japanese War. Bethune helped bring modern medicine to rural China, treating both sick villagers and wounded soldiers. He died from infection during an operation, prompting Mao Zedong to dedicate a eulogy to him. He remains widely commemorated in China today.
Family history Bethune came from a prominent Scottish Canadian family, whose origins can be traced back to the Bethune/Beaton medical kindred who practised medicine in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland from the Middle Ages to the Early Modern Era. His great-great-grandfather, the Reverend Doctor John Bethune (1751–1815), the family patriarch, established the first Presbyterian congregation in Montreal and first five Presbyterian churches in Ontario, and was one of the founders of the Presbyterian Church of Canada.Munro A, Macintyre IMC. The ancestors of Norman Bethune (1890–1939) traced back to the Bethunes of Skye, leading members of the MacBeth/Beaton medical dynasty. J R Coll Physicians. 2013;43:262–9. https://www.rcpe.ac.uk/sites/default/files/Munro.pdf
Bethune's great-grandfather, Angus Bethune (1783–1858), joined the North West Company (NWC) at an early age and travelled extensively throughout what was the North West of Canada at that time, exploring and trading for furs. Angus Bethune married Louise McKenzie (1793–1833), a Métis woman.Barkwell, Lawrence J. “BETHUNE, NORMAN, DR.” The Virtual Museum of Métis History and Culture, January 14, 2014, http://www.metismuseum.ca/resource.php/14559. Louise McKenzie was the daughter of the Hon. Roderick McKenzie, a prominent NWC partner, and his country wife.Jones, Gwynneth C. D. The Historical Roots of Métis Communities North of Lake Superior. Prepared for the Métis Nation of Ontario, March 31, 2015, p. 186. Zotero, http://www.metisnation.org/media/586242/mno_report_on_historic_metis_north_of_lake_superior_(march2015).pdf . Bethune and McKenzie were both stationed at the Fort William fur trade post at the head of Lake Superior. He eventually reached the Pacific at Fort Astoria, Oregon. He became chief factor of the Lake Huron district for the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) after the merger of the rival companies. Upon retirement from the HBC in 1839, he successfully ran for a post as an alderman on Toronto City Council.
Bethune's grandfather, Norman Bethune, Sr. (1822–1892), was educated as a doctor at King's College, University of Toronto, and in London, England, at Guy's Hospital, graduating in 1848 as a member of the Royal College of Surgeons. He went on to become a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh in 1860 and practised in Edinburgh until 1869. Upon his return to Canada, he became one of the founders of the Upper Canada School of Medicine,Heather MacDougall, “Bethune, Norman,” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 12, University of Toronto/Université Laval, accessed May 24, 2020, http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/bethune_norman_12E.html. which was incorporated into Trinity College, Toronto and eventually the University of Toronto.
Bethune's father, the Rev. Malcolm Nicolson Bethune, led an uneventful life as a small-town pastor, initially at Gravenhurst, Ontario, from 1889 to 1892. His mother was Elizabeth Ann Goodwin, an English immigrant to Canada. Both his parents were very religious, though Bethune himself was an atheist. Bethune grew up with a "fear of being mediocre", instilled into him by his emotionally strict father and domineering mother.
Bethune is a distant ancestor of actor Christopher Plummer.
Early life
Bethune was born in Gravenhurst, Ontario, on March 4, 1890. His birth certificate erroneously stated March 3., p. 7 His siblings were his sister Janet and brother Malcolm.
As a youth, Bethune attended Owen Sound Collegiate Institute, graduating in 1908.
Early career After a brief period as a primary school teacher in Edgeley, in 1909, he enrolled at University College, University of Toronto to study physiology and biochemistry.Shenwen Li, “Bethune, Henry Norman” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 16, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003, accessed May 25, 2020. He interrupted his studies for one year in 1911 to be a volunteer labourer-teacher with the Reading Camp Association (later Frontier College) at a remote lumber camp near Whitefish, Sudbury. He returned to the University of Toronto in the fall of 1912, this time in the Faculty of Medicine.
War service In 1914, when World War I was declared in Europe, he once again suspended his medical studies after being accepted into the Royal Canadian Army Medical Corps. Bethune joined the Canadian Army's No. 2 Field Ambulance to serve as a stretcher-bearer in France. He was wounded by shrapnel at the Second Battle of Ypres and sent to an English hospital to recover, repatriating to Canada in October 1915. When he had recuperated from his injuries, he returned to Toronto to complete his medical degree. He received his M.D. in 1916.
Post-war career In the 1920s the established treatment for tuberculosis was total bed rest in a sanatorium. While convalescing Bethune read about a radical new treatment for tuberculosis called pneumothorax. This involved artificially collapsing the tubercular (diseased) lung, thus allowing it to rest and heal itself. The physicians at the Trudeau thought this procedure was too new and risky, but Bethune insisted on having the operation performed and made a full and complete recovery.
In 1928 Bethune joined thoracic surgical pioneer Edward William Archibald, surgeon-in-chief of the McGill University's Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal. From 1928 to 1936 Bethune perfected his skills in thoracic surgery and developed or modified more than a dozen new surgical tools. His most famous instrument was the Bethune Rib Shears, which remain in use today.Canadian Medicine: Mobile Blood Banks at www.mta.ca He published 14 articles describing his innovations in thoracic technique. He started his career in surgery at the Toronto General Hospital in 1921.
Personal life In 1920, he met Frances Penney, whom he married in 1923. After a one-year "Grand Tour" of Europe, during which they spent much of her inheritance, they moved to Detroit, Michigan, where Bethune took up private practice and also took a part-time job as an instructor at the Detroit College of Medicine and Surgery.
In 1926, Bethune contracted tuberculosis. He sought treatment at the Trudeau Sanatorium in Saranac Lake, New York. At this time, Frances divorced Bethune and returned to her home in Scotland.
In 1929 Bethune remarried Frances; the best man at the wedding was his friend and colleague Graham Ross. They divorced again, for the final time, in 1933.
Political activities Bethune became increasingly concerned with the socio-economic aspects of disease. As a concerned doctor in Montreal during the economic depression years of the 1930s, Bethune frequently sought out the poor and gave them free medical care. He challenged his professional colleagues and agitated, without success, for the government to make radical reforms of medical care and health services in Canada.
Bethune was an early proponent of socialized medicine and formed the Montreal Group for the Security of People's Health. In 1935 Bethune travelled to the Soviet Union to observe firsthand their system of universal free health care. During this year he became a committed Communist and joined the Communist Party of Canada. When returning from the Spanish Civil War to raise support for the Loyalist cause, he openly identified with the Communist cause.
Spanish Civil War
Shortly after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936, with the financial backing of the North American Committee to Aid Spanish Democracy, Bethune went to Spain to offer his services to the government (Loyalist) forces. He arrived in Madrid on November 3.
Unable to find a place where he could be used as a surgeon, he seized on an idea which may have been inspired by his limited experience of administering blood transfusions as Head of Thoracic Surgery at the Hôpital du Sacré-Coeur in Montreal between 1932 and 1936. The idea was to set up a mobile blood transfusion service by which he could take blood donated by civilians in bottles to wounded soldiers near the front lines. The unit was officially presented to the Republicans in 1937 by Alexander Albert MacLeod under Bethune's direction. Though this unit, the Servicio canadiense de transfusión de sangre, was not the first of its kind—a similar service had been set up in Barcelona by a Spanish haematologist, Frederic Durán-Jordà, and had been functioning since September—Bethune's Madrid-based unit covered a far wider area of operation.Stewart & Stewart (2011), pp.163–176 The first vehicle he used was a Renault ADH and they later used a modified Ford station wagon.
Bethune returned to Canada on June 6, 1937, where he went on a speaking tour to raise money and volunteers for the Spanish Civil War.
Shortly before leaving for Spain, Bethune wrote the following poem, published in the July 1937 edition of The Canadian Forum:
China
In January 1938, during the Second Sino-Japanese War, Bethune travelled to Yan'an in the Shanbei region of Shaanxi province in China. There, he supported the Chinese Communist Party led by Mao Zedong. The Lebanese-American doctor George Hatem, who had come to Yan'an earlier, was instrumental in helping Bethune get started at his task of organizing medical services for the front and the region.
In China, Bethune performed emergency battlefield surgical operations on war casualties and established training for doctors, nurses, and orderlies. He did not distinguish between sides in treating casualties.
Bethune had thoughts on the manner in which medicine was practised, and stated:
In the summer of 1939, Bethune was appointed medical advisor to the Jin-Cha-Ji (Shanxi-Chahar-Hebei) Border Region Military District, under the direction of General Nie Rongzhen.Porter (1997), p. 122–123.
Death Stationed with the Chinese Communist Party's Eighth Route Army, Bethune cut his left middle finger on October 29, 1939, while retrieving bony fragments from a soldier with a wounded leg. Three days later on November 1, while operating on another soldier with neck erysipelas, his finger wound reopened and was infected. Likely due to malnourishment, which gave him a weakened state, he contracted septicaemia and died on November 12, 1939.
Bethune's service to the CCP earned him the respect of Mao Zedong, who wrote a eulogy dedicated to Bethune when he died in 1939. His name is honored in China to this day.
There is considerable controversy surrounding the last will which Bethune purportedly wrote on the eve of his death. Here follows one version: Dear Commander Nie,Today I feel really unwell. Probably I have to say farewell to you forever! Please send a letter to Tim Buck the General Secretary of the Canadian Communist Party. The address is No. 10, Wellington Street, Toronto, Canada. Please also make a copy for Committee on International Aid to China and Democratic Alliance of Canada, tell them, I am very happy here ... Please give my Kodak Retina II camera to comrade Sha Fei.— Norman Bethune, 04:20pm, November 11th, 1939.
Legacy In Canada