Bethune, Henry Norman

  • SHENWEN LI, “BETHUNE, HENRY NORMAN,” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 16, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–. https://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/bethune_henry_norman_16E.html
  • DCB profile notes:
    • Teacher, army officer, author, artist, doctor, surgeon, and inventor; b. 3 or 4 March 1890 in Gravenhurst, Ont., son of Malcolm Nicholson Bethune and Elizabeth Anne Goodwin; m. 13 Aug. 1923 Frances Eleanor Campbell Penney in London, England, and they divorced in October 1927; the couple remarried 11 Nov. 1929 in Montreal, but were divorced again 30 March 1933; they had no children; d. 12 Nov. 1939 in Huangshikou, Hebei province (People’s Republic of China).
    • Henry Norman was influenced by his grandfather (whose profession in medicine he chose) and by his father (whose zest for hard work he shared). Even as a youngster, he stood out for his wide-ranging curiosity, his great interest in surgery, and his individualistic spirit. In 1907, at the age of 17, he completed his high-school education in Owen Sound. After a spell as a primary-school teacher in the village of Edgeley, north of Toronto, in 1909 he enrolled in University College, University of Toronto, where he studied physiology and biochemistry. In the fall of 1912 Bethune returned to the University of Toronto, entering the faculty of medicine. The calm of his university life was rudely interrupted in the summer of 1914 by the outbreak of World War I.
    • Accepted into the Canadian Army Medical Corps, Bethune arrived in England in September 1914. In February 1915 he went to France as a stretcher bearer. In April, during the second battle of Ypres, he was wounded in his left leg by a shrapnel shell that exploded nearby. He was taken to a hospital in England and then, in October, repatriated to Canada. Resuming his studies at the University of Toronto, he graduated with an mb in December 1916. In April 1917 he went back to England and the war, first as a surgeon sub-lieutenant in the Royal Naval Canadian Volunteer Reserve, and then in the Royal Navy aboard the seaplane carrier Pegasus.
    • It was in London in 1920 that Bethune had met a beautiful and cultured Scotswoman, Frances Eleanor Campbell Penney. On 13 Aug. 1923, benefiting from a legacy she had received, they were married; among the things they had in common were a love of luxury and a propensity for excessive spending. After a six-month honeymoon in Europe (during which they squandered much of the inheritance), the Bethunes sailed for North America with the intention of settling there. In the fall of 1924 Bethune opened a medical practice in the rapidly growing city of Detroit. His other jobs, however, brought him into contact with physicians and he was able to make himself known in medical circles. As time went on, his practice grew and attracted more affluent patients.
    • Meanwhile, in 1926, Bethune had faced another ordeal: at the age of 36, he contracted tuberculosis and from December he was hospitalized in the Trudeau Sanatorium at Saranac Lake in New York. In those days, tuberculosis was a fatal disease. Yet Bethune did not give up and he fought the illness, notably by reading the materials on this disease available in the sanitarium library. One day he found an article about the artificial pneumothorax procedure. Convinced that it would be beneficial in his case, he badgered the physicians at the sanitarium into performing the operation. It was a success: Bethune’s health showed visible improvement and he left the institution at the end of 1927. This particular experience would have a profound influence on the rest of his life. He decided then and there to put the knowledge he had acquired to good use by specializing in thoracic surgery in order to save other tuberculosis victims.
    • While staying in Moscow and Leningrad (St Petersburg) at the time of the 15th International Physiological Congress held in August 1935, he took the opportunity to visit Russian hospitals and investigate the Soviet medical system. He was deeply impressed by it and by the preventive methods used to fight tuberculosis in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. This brief visit also led him to learn more about communism. On his return to Canada in November, he became a member of the Communist Party of Canada.
    • With the support of the New York-based China Aid Council and other organizations, Bethune and his Canadian-American Mobile Medical Unit sailed from Vancouver on 8 Jan. 1938. They landed in Hong Kong on the 27th and then flew to Wuhan, the provisional capital of the Chinese Nationalist Party. There Bethune met Zhou Enlai, one of the leaders of the Communist Party of China who would become the premier of the People’s Republic of China. He then set off with Ewen for Yan’an in northern China with the intention of helping Mao Zedong’s 8th Route Army, who formed a united front against the Japanese. Bethune and Ewen reached Xi’an on 22 March and were greeted by Zhu De, the commander-in-chief of the 8th Route Army. They arrived in Yan’an, the political nerve centre of the Communist Party of China, at the end of the month. On 31 March Bethune met with the party’s leader, Mao Zedong, who was president of the revolutionary military council, and spent a few hours in conversation with him; the interview made a great impression on Bethune. After a month or so in Yan’an, he and Brown travelled northeast to the frontier region of Jin (Shanxi)-Cha (Chahar)-Ji (Hebei), which was under Commander-in-Chief Nie Rongzhen.
    • In his native Canada, Henry Norman Bethune was ignored for many years. Since the establishment of diplomatic relations between Canada and China in 1970, and with the exchanges ensuing between the two countries, Bethune has been increasingly appreciated and in 1972 the federal government recognized him as a person of national historic significance. His contributions to surgery and medicine, including his scientific papers and the surgical instruments he invented, the mobile blood-transfusion units he set up and used in Spain and China, his struggles against fascism, and the radical reforms in health care that he suggested for Quebec and the rest of Canada, are the subject of a number of works and are becoming increasingly known across the country. Bethune also serves as an invaluable link between the cultures of Canada and China.
  • Great Great Grandson of Proven United Empire Loyalist listed in Loyalist Directory: https://uelac.ca/loyalist-directory/detail/?wpda_search_column_id=565
  • Find A Grave:https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/4624/henry-norman-bethune