What is Bethune’s life experience?

Norman Bethune's life began in Gravenhurst, Ontario. This is a small lumber town located one hundred miles north of Toronto. His father, Malcolm Nicholson Bethune, was born into an old Canadian family. His ancestors came from Scottish landowners and French Huguenots. Malcolm's father was one of the founding doctors of the Department of Medicine at Trinity College, University of Toronto. Malcolm married Elizabeth Ann Goodwin in 1887, the daughter of an English "carpenter". After Malcolm graduated from North Theological Seminary in Toronto, he, his wife, and their young daughter, Janet Lewis, moved to Gravenhurst, where he served as pastor of North Presbyterian Church. Henry Norman (Dr. Bethune) was born in this parsonage on March 3, 1890.

From an early age, Norman has been a stubborn, curious and opinionated child, and the constraints set by his parents often make it difficult for him to follow the rules. When he was six, he once roamed from home to Toronto to explore the city, only to return home hours later. His father's frequent job moves may have also enhanced his willingness to roam. Bethune's family left Gravenhurst when he was three and had moved six more times by the time he was fourteen.

In 1911, Norman interrupted his biology studies at the University of Toronto and went to work at the "Frontier College", teaching classes for immigrant workers in the lumber camps of northern Ontario. In 1914, when World War I broke out, Bethune enlisted in the Royal Canadian Army Medical Corps. He was injured while working as a stretcher bearer in Jebelles, France, and returned home to complete his medical degree. In 1917 he enlisted again, this time in the Royal Canadian Navy.

After demobilization, he stayed in the UK to engage in post-university medical research. In 1923 he married Frances Campbell Penny, the daughter of a prominent Edinburgh court accountant. Because of their incompatible personalities, the relationship between the couple is often in turmoil. They moved to Detroit, Michigan, where Bethune began his first and only private medical practice. He was 34 years old at the time. Two years later he contracted tuberculosis.

After Bethune was treated at the Credo Sanatorium in Gravenhurst, he entered the Trudeau Sanatorium in Sarana Lake, New York, for continued treatment. Strict rules and enforced discipline insulated him from the outside world, and coupled with the excitement of Frances's divorce from him, everything seemed to him a mere "dance of death." When he saw the introduction of artificial pneumothorax treatment, he asked for this dangerous operation of injecting air into the cavity of the diseased lung. Bethune recovered a month later and left the nursing home where he had lived for a year. Thereafter, he decided to devote himself to the eradication of lung disease.

In early 1928, Bethune moved to Montreal. For five years he served as first assistant to Dr. Edward Archibald, a pioneer in Canadian thoracic surgery, at the Royal Victoria Hospital. In 1933, due to personal and professional frictions with several other doctors, Bethune left that hospital and became chief of thoracic surgery at the Sackler-Cole Hospital in Cartierville, ten miles north of Montreal. While working at Sackler Cole, a smaller, less prestigious hospital, he was twice elected to the executive committee of the American Society of Thoracic Surgeons.

In addition to performing surgeries, Bethune wrote many articles for medical journals introducing new surgical procedures and outlining improvements derived from his research. He designed many new instruments and continued to experiment and strive for excellence. One of these instruments, called the "Bethune Rib Scissors," is still being manufactured.

Professionally, Bethune is internationally recognized as a highly skilled and dedicated surgeon. But when it comes to dealing with people and the world, he does not stick to tradition. He is a complex man who can both provoke people to oppose him and inspire others. He married Frances again in 1929, but friction between them led to their divorce in 1933. During this period, most of the friends he made were creative. Bethune himself was also a very talented amateur art enthusiast. His profound talent is enough to change worldly affairs. However, he often "loved to astonish the faint of heart in irritating ways." In public places, people can see him wearing different worldly clothes and driving a beautiful yellow sports car. One of his friends recalled that Bethune was like a "shooting star."

However, Bethune was not immune to economic conditions. A third of Montreal's population lives on direct benefits. When he realized the impact of economic conditions on the health of the poor, he felt that medicine must not only pay attention to medical symptoms, but also pay attention to the social roots of disease. In 1935 he established a free clinic for the unemployed. At the end of the summer of the same year, he went to the Soviet Union to attend the International Physiology Conference and took the opportunity to examine the socialized medical system. Although he saw many things that it disagreed with, he believed that only by regulating private medical practice could the government ensure that all people could receive treatment, regardless of their financial status. In 1936 Bethune organized the Montreal People's Health Organization. In the same year he joined the Communist Party of China.

In the summer of 1936, the Spanish Civil War broke out.

Franco, backed by the military might of Italian fascists and German Nazis, launched a rebellion and waged war against Spain's democratically elected government at the time. Bethune was one of many who believed that democracy would be threatened if Spain's military dictatorship was not stopped. In September 1936, under the auspices of the Canadian Committee to Support Democracy in Spain, he volunteered to serve in Spain.

Soon after arriving in Madrid, Bethune conceived a plan for a mobile blood transfusion team, which could collect donated blood in the city and send it to the places where blood is most needed. Within a month the blood transfusion team was up and running. Although Bethune later called it the "Glorious Milk Corps," his mobile blood bank was hailed as the greatest innovation in military medicine during the Spanish Civil War.

In February 1937, Bethune and his blood transfusion team went to the besieged city of Malaga on the southern coast of Spain. Before he reached Malaga, the city fell. On the way he met more than 40,000 refugees, carrying their children and belongings, fleeing to Almeria, a hundred miles away. Those who could not move on lay by the roadside waiting to die. For three days, Bethune and his transfusion team managed to get the most critical to safety in Almeria. But then Almeria was also bombed. This deliberate bombing of refugees was something Bethune would never forget. "Spain is a scar on my heart," he later wrote to Francis.

In May 1937, the Spanish Communist Party and the National Army Medical Corps were organized into a bureaucracy, and Bethune felt that he could no longer work in the institution. Bethune returned to Canada in a state of anger and exhaustion, but he immediately began a cross-country speaking tour to raise funds for work in Spain.

However, in the summer of the same year, the Japanese army invaded China, and the Second Sino-Japanese War broke out. Bethune believed that another military dictatorship was forming in China. He wrote, "Spain and China are part of the same battle. I want to go to China because the needs there are most urgent."

On January 8, 1936, Bethune brought medical equipment worth US$5,000 and, accompanied by Canadian nurse Joan Yoon, said goodbye to Canada for the last time. When he arrived at Hankou, the temporary capital of China, Zhou Enlai, a representative of the Communist Party of China, photographed a guard escorting him to Yan'an, the seat of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, about five hundred miles northwest of Hankou.

On the night he arrived in Yan'an, Mao Zedong, Chairman of the Communist Party of China, met him and invited him to stay in charge of the Eighth Route Military Border Region Hospital. Within a month, Bethune decided to go to the front line, where the wounded could be treated more effectively and promptly.

On May 1, he left Yan'an and headed for the mountainous area of ??the Shanxi-Chahar-Hebei border area, 200 miles north of Yan'an, which was isolated from the outside world, where the fighting was the fiercest. The wounded who had been sent back from the front lines days or even weeks ago were huddled under thin blankets. The bandages had not been changed for many days, and the wounds had become gangrenous. Many injured people can only be treated with amputation surgery. After five days of long journey, Bethune refused to rest and started working immediately.

In a region of 13 million people, Bethune was one of only a handful of qualified doctors. When he found that the people he was training could train others, he concentrated on teaching. He conducted training courses in first aid, hygiene and basic surgery. He compiled textbooks with illustrations, translated them, copied them and distributed them. His goal is to train for a year as a doctor and six months as a nurse.

Bethune and his military chiefs discussed setting up a hospital on the front line for teaching and treatment purposes. Although they disagreed with this for tactical reasons, out of respect for Bethune, they still allowed him to act according to his plan. Bethune spent two months planning and overseeing the construction of his beloved "Model Hospital." The hospital held a grand opening ceremony on September 15, 1938, but was destroyed by enemy forces within three weeks.

At this time, Bethune realized that in China's guerrilla war zone, all medical equipment must be mobile. In a subsequent monthly report, he emphasized: "The time for doctors to wait for patients to come to them is over. Doctors should go to the wounded." The following year, he traveled three thousand miles across mountains and rivers, including in areas where mules could not pass. He walked four hundred miles on a steep journey. He used local materials and designed a portable operating room that could be carried by two mules. The speed with which he operates is astonishing. On one occasion, he performed one hundred and fifteen operations in sixty-nine hours, even under artillery fire.

In a very short period of time, Bethune's name became a legend. "Attack! Bethune is with us!" became the battle cry of the soldiers. The story of this extraordinary foreigner who was not afraid of hardship and donated his own clothes, food, and even his own blood to the wounded was widely spread.

On the contrary, the dedication of the Chinese people also infected Bethune. Working with the Chinese made his impatience disappear. In a letter to a friend in Canada, he said, "I am indeed very tired, but I have never been so happy for a long time... because people need me."

Towards the end of October, When he was operating on a wounded man, he accidentally cut his finger because he did not have rubber gloves. His wound seemed inconsequential at the time, as this had happened before without incident. But this time an infection occurred, which turned into viral hematosis. Even on his deathbed, he refused to stop working. Norman Bethune died in the early morning of November 12, 1939.

After Chairman Mao heard the news of Bethune's death, he wrote the article "In Memory of Bethune". This article has become one of Chairman Mao's most important works and a must-read article for the Chinese people. Bethune became respected as a model of being unselfish and extremely responsible for his work. His picture appears on brochures, books and stamps. Sometimes when one mentions the phrase "no self-interest" in Chairman Mao's article, one knows that it refers to Bethune.

Monuments praising Bethune’s noble character can be found all over China. The model hospital has been rebuilt. The mountainside air raid shelter he used, the old temple where he performed surgery and his house have all been turned into museums. His body was moved to the Shijiazhuang Martyrs Cemetery in 1950. This martyrs cemetery was built to commemorate the more than 25,000 martyrs who died in the Anti-Japanese War. There is only one giant statue erected in this large park, and this is the statue of Bethune. Across the road, next to the Bethune Memorial Hall, is the "Bethune International Peace Hospital" with 800 beds.

In Canada, Dr. Norman Bethune was awarded the title of "Canadian Historical Celebrity" in 1972. In 1973, the Canadian federal government purchased the parsonage of the former Presbyterian Church in Gravenhurst, the birthplace and birthplace of Bethune, and it was officially opened to the public in 1976 as a Canadian memorial. In 1996, Bethune's birthplace was listed as a National Historic Landmark. In 1998, Dr. Bethune's name was included in the Canadian Medical Who's Who.