Norman Bethune - SpeedyLook encyclopedia

Biography

As of its childhood, it had an admiration overflowing for his grandfather Norman Bethune, military surgeon during the Crimean War and companion of another military surgeon, Henri Dunant, founder of the Croix-Rouge.

During the First World War, Norman Bethune works as Brancardier until it is wounded, with Ypres in Belgium, commune sadly returned celebrates for the first attack with poison gas. It continues, thereafter, its studies in medicine with the Université of Toronto, then again enlists in the British Armée like surgeon. He is army medical officer for the Canadian aviators in France during the last six months of the First World War. This step is the first of long series of achievements to come to assistance of humanity.

He is doctor with Montreal, where the difficult living conditions, the social injustice and poverty push it in 1935 towards the Communist party of Canada and to give free medical care. A third of the population montréalaise was then on the public assistance and private. It sets up in particular a free medical private clinic for people disadvantaged in Montreal, within the framework of its humanistic ideology of Social medicine. He invents and improves several surgical instruments, of which some are still used today.

Engaged in the Spanish Civil war (1936 - 1939) on the republican side, Norman Bethune organizes the mobile Unit of blood transfusion on the frontline (1936-1938). By the symbol of blood, these blood transfusions had psychological effects of important gathering and ideological cohesion.

In May 1937, the bureaucratic reorganization of the republican sanitary service is at the origin of clashes with the personality libertarian, innovating and creative of Norman Bethune which goes back to Canada for then going to continue its work in China, then fights about it against the Japanese invasion during the Sino-Japanese Guerre (1937-1945). It notes that there are not sufficient doctors qualified to look after the people wounded during the war with Japan.

Arrived to China with a cargo of medical device and a nurse, Norman Bethune joined the 8th army of walk of Mao Zedong in Yenan in the north of China. Under the conditions of mobility of the Guerilla, Bethune organizes surgical mobile antennas on the frontline with all the transported material with back of mule. They was the prototypes of MASH ( Mobile Antenna off Surgical Hospital ). In addition to the medical care, Norman Bethune was devoted to on-the-job training of male nurses in six months and doctors in one year who were the precursors of “doctor-with-foot-naked”. The idea and didactic technology are always with work in China and in the developing countries.

Dr. Bethune thus starts to offer training in first aid, medical measurements and simple surgical operations. He creates hospitals of care and of teaching, sets up of the mobile medical departments and transports mobile private clinics to horse in the mountains.

In October 1939, while it operates without surgical gloves a wounded soldier, it cuts the hand accidentally. It then contracted an infection which, in the absence of the Pénicilline necessary, was transformed into Septicémie which poisons its blood. Norman Bethune dies on November 12th, 1939.

Heritage

With the medical practice, Bethune made work of pioneer in the professional training of the doctors and the male nurses on the ground of the action which led to the Chinese configuration of the “ doctor-with-feet-nus ” acting in-depth in the population, in contrast with the “ doctor-in-blouse-blanche ” of the hospital institutions distant physically and socially from the medical and social needs for the population. The social medicine is that which privileges the social etiology of the disease. This perception is that of a ecosystemic Approche which consists in moving away for better perceiving, to connect for better including/understanding and to locate for better acting.

Dr. Bethune took the problems of the social medicine to the source by privileging the formation on the ground of the medical personnel and by configuring the installations of care to nearest to the population in request.

Its Canadian heritage is the institution, as of 1969,30 years after its death, of CLSC, with the conjunction of the social services with the medical departments. Flexible and of small size, these CLSC are distributed everywhere in areas far away from the big cities and offer a versatility of services, energy of legal aid to the psychological intervention.

Honors and recognitions

The Canadian actor Donald Sutherland played the character of Norman Bethune in two biographical films: Bethune (1977) and Bethune, the Making off has Hero (1990), a canado-free-Chinese coproduction.

ONF produced documentary on Norman Bethune entitled Bethune and another on the Canadian volunteers of the Battalion Mac-PAP of the international Brigades intitué Los Canadienses . These documentary on film and video-cassette are available through the embassies and consulates of Canada and other cultural institutions of Canada.

He is member of the Temple of the Canadian medical fame.

Mao Zedong, chief of the Popular republic of China of 1949 to 1976, wrote a test in homage to Norman Bethune, that all the Chinese schoolboys had the obligation to read. In China, one set up a statue to him and devoted a house, a museum, a school and a hospital.

Anecdotes

Its admiration for his/her grandfather was such as it had hung the plate of doctor of its grandfather to the door of his room and adoptee his name “ Norman Bethune ” in the place of his “ Henry Norman Bethune ”. This admiration referred at the same time to medicine and the Humanisme in the social affairs. It appeared in its works in surgery of war in first line and in the social medicine.

Norman Bethune was always offusqué by hearing its name pronounced in English “the Bethioun”, in bilingual Canada, evoking the French city of the name of Béthune in the Pas-de-Calais.

In the years 1960, France of Charles de Gaulle called upon André Malraux to approach China and the Canada of Pierre Elliott Trudeau evoked Bethune to do it. Perhaps there is not a film of fiction on Malraux and Timbre-poste to its effigy, in China and France, but documentary on Malraux at Flammarion under the title of Métamorphoses de/Metamorphosis off Malraux , in versions English and French. It is through the action of Trudeau that Richard Nixon could be introduced in China. The part of Ping-pong was only one pretext, whereas the Humanisme and the Socialisme of Bethune were the major origin.

One of the largest heroes of China is by no means an Chinese -- he is Canadian! Norman Bethune was born in 1890 in Gravenhurst, in Ontario, with thousand miles of the North-West of China, where it is deceased of a septicaemia in 1939. During the First World War, Norman Bethune worked as stretcher-bearer until it is wounded, with Ypres, in France. It thereafter continued its studies in medicine with the Université of Toronto, then enlisted again in the British army as surgeon. He was army medical officer for the Canadian aviators in France during the last six months of the war. This step was the first of long series of achievements to come to assistance of humanity. It in particular set up a free medical private clinic for people disadvantaged in Montreal, within the framework of its humanistic ideology of “social medicine” and it invented and improved several surgical instruments, of which some are still used today.

In 1936, during the civil war of Spain, Norman Bethune created the first private clinic of blood transfusions mobile in order to bring blood to the soldiers wounded to the combat. In 1938, Bethune went to China where it noted that there were not sufficient doctors qualified to look after the people wounded during the war with Japan. Dr. Bethune thus started to offer training in first aid, medical measurements and simple surgical operations. He created hospitals of care and teaching, set up of the medical departments mobile and transported mobile private clinics at horse in the mountains. In October 1939, while it operated a soldier wounded without surgical gloves, it was accidentally cut to the hand. It then contracted an infection which, in the absence of penicillin necessary, was transformed into Septicémie empoisement blood. It is deceased on November 12th, 1939.

With the medical practice, Béthune made work of pioneer in the professional training of the doctors and the male nurses on the ground of the action which led to the Chinese configuration of the “doctors to in-depth barefeet” acting in the population, in contrast with the “doctors in white blouse” of the hospital institutions distant physically and socially the medical and social needs of the population. The social medicine is that which privileges the etiology

Registered with the Communist party of Quebec, its Communism is instrumental for its fundamental humanism, like that of Jean-Paul Sartre and other philosophers, of which some are activists and other thinkers.

Conclusion

While going with front of patients, which that they are and where that they are, Dr. Henry Norman Bethune was the pioneer and the precursor of this humane medicine of which Bernard Kouchner and some others collected the heritage. The right to health and the duty to answer it are necessarily political as well as the political commitment to achieve it, of which Henry Norman Bethune made proof.

Documentary on " youtube":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RA2P59cSXAA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnt7TyDZNgE&mode=related&search=

External bonds

Texts of bethune to the section Canada
Mao Zedong: With the memory of Norman Béthune
short text on bethune
Biographie
Biographie
'' In Memory off Norman Bethune '' by Mao Zedong
Biographical off Notes in Canadian Heirloom Collection
http://www.pc.gc.ca/lhn-nhs/on/bethune/natcul/natcul1_e.asp Bethune Memorial House National Historic Site Canada]
Posters of Bethune
Bethune Institute
(in) CBC DIGITAL Archives - “Comrade” Bethune: In Controversial Hero
Site of the Communist party of Quebec

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