From Encyclopedia Jr, free information reference for Kids
Henry Norman Bethune, MD (March 3, 1890 – November 12, 1939) was a Canadian physician, medical innovator, a member of the Communist Party of Canada, and humanitarian. In Chinese, he is known as "Bai Qiu-en" (白求恩).
[edit] Biography
Dr. Bethune was born in Gravenhurst, Ontario, Canada. His grandfather, Norman Bethune was also a noted Canadian physician and founder of one of the first medical schools in Toronto.
After graduating from the University of Toronto as a doctor, Bethune moved to Montreal where he was associated with McGill University and taught thoracic surgery. Bethune was an early proponent of universal health care, the success of which he observed during a visit to the Soviet Union. As a doctor in Montreal, Bethune frequently sought out the poor and gave them free medical care. As a thoracic surgeon, he travelled to Spain (1936-1937) and China (1938-1939) to perform 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 context led him to develop the first practical method for transporting blood.
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
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 against fascism, and then went to China to help the Communists there 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. He is the only Westerner to have a statue in Communist China, and also has a hospital and a medical school named in his honour.
[edit] Memory
Virtually unknown in his homeland during his lifetime, Doctor Bethune finally received international recognition as 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. Mao went ahead and made the essay required reading for the entire Chinese population. Mao concluded in that essay: We must all learn the spirit of absolute selflessness from him. With this spirit everyone can be very useful to the people. 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.
Statue of Bethune in Montreal
Bethune College at York University, and Dr Norman Bethune Collegiate Institute (a secondary school) in Scarborough, Ontario, were named after Dr. Bethune. Heroic statues of Bethune have been erected throughout China.
Memorial House in Gravenhust
The Canadian government purchased his father's and his neighbour's house in Gravenhurst and restored the houses into a memorial house in 1976. In August 2002, then Governor General Adrienne Clarkson, who has Chinese ancestry, visited the house and unveiled a bronze statue of him.
Bethune also invented several surgical instruments that still bear his name.
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.
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. [1]
He attended Owen Sound Collegiate in Owen Sound, Ontario, now known as Owen Sound Collegiate And Vocational Institute. He graduated from OSCVI in 1911 along with William Avery "Billy" Bishop. Both names are inscribed on the School's Great War Memorial.
He is buried in Shijiazhuang, Hebei Province, China, where his tomb along with that of Dr. Dwarkanath Kotnis lie next to great memorials and statues to their honour. His ideals and teachings were instrumental in the formation and growth of the Medical College Democratic Students Association.
[edit] See also
- James Gareth Endicott
- Dwarkanath Kotnis
[edit] References
[edit] External links
