Although Bethune first gained international fame as a thoracic surgeon, he was also a painter, poet, fighter, critic, teacher, speaker, inventor, medical writer and theorist to varying degrees.
You don't know Norman Bethune
I. Old historical photos
For several generations of China people in the second half of the 20th century, Bethune was like a white military bag, an old watch or an old photo at the bottom of the box after several historical trends. There is a famous photographer who is particularly familiar with historical photos. It was taken in a hurry by the famous photographer Wu Yinxian in June 1939+00, and was later made into stamps: at the beginning of the Japanese winter sweeping in the Jinchaji border area, Bethune and the field medical team marched on the mountain road for more than 70 miles, and set up a temporary operating table in a small temple 5 or 6 miles away from the fire line; Bethune, dressed in the Eighth Route Army homespun uniform and sandals, was leaning over the operating table, surrounded by several assistants. The setting sun shines in from the left front of the photo, and his white hair, glasses, beard, thin cheeks and attentive expression are outlined from the side. It was only 165438+ 10/2, the day he died in the line of duty.
This historical photo of Wu Yinxian and Mao Zedong's famous work "In Memory of Bethune" are well known to our generations.
The main basis: Wan Li came to China not far from Wan Li, without any selfish interests. This is the image of Bethune in the Old Three Chapters, and it is also a highly abstract image of Bethune. When the strong historical background gradually recedes, this image seems to become empty, becoming a moral idol and an ideological symbol. This image, we now let it return to the truth of life.
Second, degenerate people.
Norman bethune was born in Gravenhurst, a small town in northern Ontario, on March 1890. The Bethune family was originally a Huguenot Sect in France (French Protestantism), and/kloc-immigrated to Scotland in the middle of the 6th century, and/kloc-immigrated to Canada in the 8th century. Bethune's grandfather was a famous surgeon in Toronto, his father was a Presbyterian priest and his mother was a missionary.
Bethune was a little bold since he was a child. When I was 8 years old, I dissected flies and cow legs, chased them to a steep cliff to catch butterflies, and once I broke my leg. /kloc-at the age of 0/0, he swam across Georgia Bay alone and almost drowned. He not only loves science and adventure, but also likes to paint on canvas with clay molds. "My mother gave me the character of a missionary," he likes to say. "My father gave me the passion to act and do things."
Bethune was still studying medicine at the University of Toronto when World War I broke out. On the day of Canada's declaration of war, he joined the army and was sent to the field rescue team at the front of France as a stretcher bearer. Later, I was injured, returned to China, and went back to college. After graduation, he joined the British navy and became a military doctor.
At the end of the war, Bethune was serving in the Canadian Air Force in France. He and his friends are sitting in a bar in Paris. At that time, some people dreamed of using American President Wilson's "fourteen points" as a guide to the new world. Some people admire Fabian socialism, some people use Freud's unconscious theory to explain the world, and some people act under the banner of Karl Marx. Bethune found himself a homeless tramp. He felt disillusioned, which was the common feeling of western intellectuals in the 1920s and 1930s after the war. Bethune was 28 years old, and his temples were getting old before they got old. He grew a beard and retired from the British army.
During his internship in the hospital, he went to Europe on business. He used his art appreciation ability to buy works of art in France and Spain, and then sold them in London, earning enough money for him to live a luxurious life. He treats money like dirt like a noble child. He spends a lot of money on the best clothes, the best food, the best wine and countless books. Others want to borrow it, and he also prepares clay, paint and canvas for himself. At that time, young Bethune was walking in the street, walking in and out of the apartment in Soho, where degenerate artists lived in London, on crutches. He has a straightforward personality and a heroic manner, and he can ignore gains and losses for his inner beliefs. Every night, young writers, artists and musicians gather in his apartment, eating and drinking, and listening to him talk about his art and outlook on life. At that time, he believed in the theory of walter pater, the spiritual father of British writer Oscar Wilde. He was a Victorian cultural hero, advocating senses, fun and happiness, and the so-called experience was everything. In London in the early 1920s, Bethune was immersed in a flashy and dissolute life, which temporarily cured his disillusionment.
For three years in a row, he was busy with surgery, painting, sculpture and making new friends. However, this bohemian life changed because he met two women.
Third, middle-class famous doctors
After his internship, he worked in a private clinic in east London. Mrs Eleanor del is the owner of this clinic. She was extremely rich, and later became Bethune's friend and sponsored him to go to Europe for further study. He observed the operations of European surgeons in Paris, Vienna and Berlin, and benefited from them all his life.
1923 In the autumn, he went to Edinburgh to take the membership examination of the Royal College of Surgeons and met Francis Penny. She is 22 years old and the only daughter of a prominent family in Edinburgh. The girls' school in the upper class of England gave her a quiet and refined temperament, and her gentle and lovely voice and beauty made him fall in love at first sight. Three months later, they got married.
After their marriage, Bethune traveled to Europe and North America with his wife, and finally settled in Detroit, the capital of the emerging automobile industry. He opened a private clinic and soon became famous. However, there are problems in his marriage. They love each other, but they are separated from each other because of different backgrounds; He is decisive, but impatient; Their relationship has become a series of quarrels and reconciliation, anger and tenderness, scolding and regret cycle. Even after they arrived in Detroit, all this did not improve. But just then, he got sick.
He has tuberculosis, which is a life-changing disease. His cheeks are sunken, his hair is whiter and his eyes are burning red. He is lying in bed. "I'm finished-you have a whole life waiting for you," he said firmly to Frances. "I want you to divorce me and go your own way."
This is 1926. He lived in seclusion in Trudeau sanatorium in New York, isolated from the world, and his absurd experiences in his early years seemed to have happened in his last life. He is nearly middle-aged, tasting the bitterness of death alone. He said, "I don't regret it. I'm tired of it. After that, it's meaningless ... "
In despair, by chance, he learned that someone was trying to treat tuberculosis by surgery instead of traditional recuperation. This means that thousands of people can be saved. After in-depth research, he asked for an operation on himself. The effect of surgical treatment was unexpected. His cough gradually eased and he was discharged two months later.
Not many people have the opportunity to face death and learn the truth about their lives-and then live. Now, he has no interest in Detroit, private practice or making money. He stopped doing general surgery, and tuberculosis became his only interest. He cooperated with two other doctors and conducted a series of lung compression experiments on mice. The results were published in 1930 Journal of Bacteriology, and other results were also published in those professional journals. His mind is full of ideas about new technologies and methods, and he keeps taking risks and doing various experiments on himself. He also invented several thoracic surgical instruments, some of which were like rib scissors, named after Bethune. He practiced medicine in hospitals in several big cities in Canada and the United States, and became one of the most famous thoracic surgeons in North America in the 1930s.
Bethune earned a lot of money, but as in his early years, he always spent it cleanly. He once remarried Francis and broke up a year later. He continued painting and sculpture, took care of local unknown artists, always paid for their works, and established a children's art school. 1935 autumn, held a solo exhibition in Montreal. In those years, he was the director of thoracic surgery at Sacred Heart Hospital in Montreal and one of the highest paid people in the medical field. People from all over the world came to Sacred Heart to watch his works. He is a successful surgeon, a celebrity and a bachelor with marriage conditions. The upper classes are chasing him, but he is always at odds with them.
The sense of disillusionment in the early years still lingers. He always feels that there is something wrong, and chest surgery alone can't cure the patients-those poor patients. They are more and more, because the Great Depression has been going on all over the capitalist world for several years.
How did he turn left?
A few years ago, from 1929 to 10, the new york stock market fluctuated and then crashed. Unemployment, bankruptcy, poverty, banks, factories and mines have closed down, and those who are "cautiously optimistic" have jumped from the windows of their office buildings on Wall Street. He noticed a paradox in the world: millions of people have no clothes to wear, but the United States plows cotton in the fields into the soil; Tens of millions of people are hungry, but Canada burns wheat; Someone on the street corner asked for 5 cents for a cup of coffee, but Brazil poured it into the sea.
This paradox also invaded his medical field. "The rich have tuberculosis of the rich, and the poor have tuberculosis of the poor. The rich recover and the poor die. " He said, "This simply illustrates the close relationship between economics and pathology." There are wars and revolutions brewing in the history of the world, and he has been involved in them involuntarily.
On the streets of Montreal, he witnessed a large-scale demonstration. Crowds of mounted police rushed into the crowd with sirens, waving batons and beating around. Men and women fell to the ground, shouting in fear and pain. He took the medicine box out of the convertible and bandaged the injured demonstrators.
The next day, the leader of the Montreal Unemployment Association was having a meeting in a dark office when the door suddenly opened and a well-dressed man came in. He handed over a business card and said, "I'm Dr. Bethune. Any men, women and children you send will be treated for free. I hope to find ten other doctors to do this next week ... "He began to mix with the poor, went to their homes, held meetings with them and met their leaders. These people discuss philosophy, organize trade unions, and receive him with a warm and gay feeling he likes.
From 65438 to 0935, as a representative of the Canadian medical community, he went to Leningrad to attend the international conference on physiology there, but in fact he mainly wanted to see the "socialized medical system" of the Soviet Union and "Russians". Through the People's Committee of Public Health of the Soviet Union, he was allowed to visit many hospitals and nursing homes and made investigations at his convenience. He found that in 18 years after the founding of the People's Republic of China, although nearly half of the time was spent on domestic economic reconstruction, the incidence of tuberculosis in the Soviet Union dropped by more than 50%, which further strengthened his own belief that tuberculosis could be completely eliminated. In the Soviet Union, he found the most complete sanatorium and rest home in the world, and industrial workers enjoyed the priority of free medical care, which was just the opposite of the western world he was familiar with. In clinics and nursing homes, all medical care is free, which is not charity, but the civil rights of patients. Here, many ideas he has been advocating and imagining have been realized, such as tuberculosis prevention measures for children, such as rehabilitation system for tuberculosis patients.
He was completely convinced and excited. After returning to Canada, he made travel speeches all over the country, using childbirth and labor pains as metaphors to defend the Russian revolution and Soviet system. Starting from the problems of medical specialty, he came to the social conclusion that the best way to protect health is to change the unhealthy social and economic system and eliminate ignorance, poverty and unemployment. The next logical step is that he joined the * * * production party. The missionary's son firmly believes that if Christ is born again, it will be his choice.
At that time, the Spanish Civil War was in full swing. The Canadian Committee for Aid to Democracy in Spain decided to send a medical team to Madrid, and Bethune was elected as the captain. He resigned from Sacred Heart Hospital, made a will and went to Spain three weeks later.
In the past, tuberculosis was his enemy; Now, fascism is his enemy. He organized a battlefield blood transfusion team and went to Madrid, Barcelona, Malaga, almeria and other front lines to give blood transfusion to the wounded. Franco's army is approaching, and there are blood, limbs and bodies everywhere. After the Spanish Civil War, blood and fire turned him into a soldier.
Bethune returned to China and traveled to North America to seek wider support for a democratic Spain. At this time, China War of Resistance against Japan broke out. The Committee for International Aid to China cooperates with the Alliance for the Defence of China chaired by Soong Ching Ling. Bethune asked to lead a medical team to northern China to support the guerrillas there. 1938 65438+1On October 2nd, he took enough medicine and equipment, equipped with several medical teams, and took an ocean liner from Vancouver to Hong Kong.
5. Last stop: Taihang Mountain in China.
We are all familiar with the following stories. He went to Yan 'an and met with Mao Zedong. Under the leadership of Nie, the front line of North China's anti-Japanese war, he organized a field medical team to go to the Shanxi-Chahar-Hebei border region.
Villagers in northern China are fighting against the most powerful army in Asia. Those former plowmen, women, students, soldiers, met together, trained together, marched together, sang together, and their faces were all glowing. Bethune stayed with them and found a new life. He led the medical team to the nearest place to the fire line and rescued every wounded person with his superb medical skills. On one occasion, he worked continuously for 40 hours and performed 7/kloc-0 operations; On another occasion, he rescued 1 15 wounded people within 69 hours. In the mountains of Taihang Mountain, before he reached a place, his story began to spread, and his arrival inspired local morale. Soldiers often shout his name and rush to the enemy.
He is 49 years old, white-haired, and has studied all his life. Artists/doctors/guerrillas, from bohemian young people in their early years to middle-class famous doctors, turned left regularly in the Great Depression and crisis of capitalism and became producers of * * *. In the end, he won the respect and love of a quarter of mankind in the hinterland of the Asian continent and found the destination and true meaning of life. Looking back now, Mao Zedong's famous words are actually about Bethune who stood at the end of his life: a noble person, a pure person, a moral person, and a person who was out of low taste. ...