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Norman Bethune: The early years
In China, he's been a national hero since his death in 1939. But in his birthplace of Canada Dr. Norman Bethune was virtually unknown until the 1970s. His communist beliefs and unorthodox personality made him a controversial figure in Canada. His medical accomplishments, however, are irrefutable. Bethune cared for the wounded in wartorn Spain and China, and in the process revolutionized military medicine.
• Norman Bethune was born on March 3, 1890, in Gravenhurst, Ont. His full name was Henry Norman Bethune.
• His father, Malcolm Nicolson Bethune, was a Presbyterian minister.
• Bethune went to the University of Toronto in 1909 to study physiological and biochemical science. But the First World War interrupted his studies, as Bethune left school to become a stretcher-bearer in France in 1915.
• He was wounded by shrapnel in his knee that spring, and returned home to Canada later that fall.
• Bethune soon went back to U of T and completed his studies. He graduated with a bachelor of medicine in December 1916. Dr. Frederick Banting, one of the discoverers of insulin, was in Bethune's graduating class.
• In 1917, with the war still in progress, Bethune joined the Royal Navy as a surgeon-lieutenant at the Chatham Hospital in England. In 1919, he began an internship specializing in children's diseases at London's Hospital for Sick Children.
• Bethune met a young Scottish woman named Frances Penney in London during the fall of 1920. They fell in love and married in 1923. They were complete opposites -- she was a subdued introvert; he was a brash extrovert.
• After the wedding the couple went on a trip through continental Europe, where Bethune demonstrated his spendthrift ways. One much-retold incident occurred when they had run out of money in Vienna, so Bethune got a friend to wire him emergency money. But on his way home from collecting the money, he spent it all on a piece of fine China that he saw in an art shop. Frances was not pleased.
• When the honeymoon was over, the couple moved to Detroit. Bethune began practicing medicine there, and also got a part-time job as an instructor at the Detroit College of Medicine and Surgery.
• While in Detroit, the overworked Bethune came down with tuberculosis in 1926. For treatment, he checked into the Trudeau Sanatorium, located in the Adirondack Mountains in upstate New York.
• Bethune and his wife divorced in 1927 while he was still at the sanatorium.
• In the sanatorium, Bethune began to read a lot about a radical new operation for tuberculosis called pneumothorax. This involved artificially collapsing the tubercular (diseased) lung, thus allowing it to rest. The physicians at the Trudeau thought this procedure was way too new and risky to be performed on Bethune (there was a great chance that they could puncture a lung in the process). But Bethune strongly insisted, exclaiming, "Gentlemen, I welcome the risk!"
• The pneumothorax operation was successful. Two months later, Bethune left the Trudeau in good health in late 1927.
• Bethune and his ex-wife Frances were remarried in 1929. This didn't last long, however. They were divorced again for a final time in 1933. The two always kept in contact after this and remained genuinely fond of each other, but they were unable to live together peacefully.
Program: CBC Sunday Night
Broadcast Date: Sept. 13, 1964
Guest(s): Ted Allan, Georges Deshayes, Elizabeth Hercomb, Irene Kon, Marion Scott, Hazen Sise, Paul Weil
Reporter: Marjorie McEnaney
Duration: 4:57
Last updated: March 6, 2012
Page consulted on August 22, 2012
All Clips from this Topic
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Exploring the early years of Dr. Bethune.
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Bethune provides medical care to wartorn China.
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In this 1972 clip, writer Ted Allan tells Barbara Frum that it took de...
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33 years after his death, Bethune is finally a "Canadian of national h...
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A Gravenhurst family has to move now that tourists are flocking to see...
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Bethune's niece recalls her family's embarrassment over her uncle's Co...
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In this clip from 1973, author Roderick Stewart speaks at length about...
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Besides being a renowned physician, Norman Bethune was also an art ent...
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A portrait of Bethune, from the doctors and nurses who knew him in Mon...
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Actor Donald Sutherland praises Dr. Bethune, who he recently played in...
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This 1988 clip reveals how on-set differences of opinion almost derail...
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Rod Mickelburgh visits the children of the late Jean Ewen, a nurse who...
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50 years after the People's Republic of China was founded, Bethune is ...
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In China, he's been a national hero since his death in 1939. But in hi...