Bethune, Henry Norman M.D.
Battlefield Surgeon ~ 1890-1939
Norman Bethune was born in Gravenhurst, ON in 1890. His father took the family to Grey County in 1905 having accepted a post as minister at the Lakeshore Daywood Church three miles north of Annan. They moved to Owen Sound shortly thereafter. Norman graduated from Owen Sound Collegiate Institute in 1907 and went on to graduate from University of Toronto, Faculty of Medicine. He served as a stretcher-bearer with The Royal Canadian Army Medical Corps during the First World War. In 1936, he helped the Loyalists during the Spanish Civil War and while there set up the first mobile blood transfusion service in history. In 1938, he went to China where he helped Mao-Tse-Tung by setting up battlefield surgical teams. On one occasion under heavy fire, Bethune operated on 48 wounded soldiers without resting or eating. He lived in caves on the battlefield and wrote medical textbooks at night, such texts as The Theory and Practice of Battlefield Rescue in Guerrilla Warfare. He formed the first medical unit that could be carried using two mules. He also developed methods of blood typing, using a medical kit that could be carried on a donkey for use at high altitudes, using a mobile unit, and taught field surgeons his craft. Dr. Bethune died in China in 1939 from an infection, which turned into blood poisoning, acquired when he cut his finger during surgery. Norman Bethune is considered a hero in China for his medical work. Chairman Mao called him, “A man of utter devotion to others without thought of self.” There is a historical plaque at the Owen Sound Collegiate and Vocational Institute dedicated to Norman Bethune.
Additional information: Dorothy Vick, From Quill to Ballpoint, RBW Graphics, Owen Sound ON. 1988.
Wikipedia website: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Bethune.
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