Published:2020-03-13Source:People's Political Consultative Conference Daily
2020 marks the 130th anniversary of Bethune's birth.
Although Bethune is a household name in China, what is less known is that he once suffered from an extremely serious infectious disease——— tuberculosis, and walked through the ghost gate.
However, it was also this illness that made Bethune brave enough to try new therapies, devote himself to research and become a surgical expert after his recovery, become an advocate of social medicine, and finally join the Communist Party of Canada. These stories are the prelude to his coming to China to support the Chinese people's War of Resistance.
The teenager aspires to study medicine successfully
The ancestors of the Bethune family were French Huguenots, known as Puritans in the Americas, who migrated from northern France to Scotland in the mid-16th century and to Canada in the 18th century. Bethune's grandfather was Henry Norman Bethune, one of the founders of Trinity Medical School in Toronto, Ontario, and a well-known surgeon. Influenced by his grandfather, Bethune was determined to become a surgeon like his grandfather.
After graduating from high school, Bethune entered the University of Toronto School of Medicine to study medicine. He entered the fall of 1909 and graduated in December 1916 with a bachelor's degree. During his studies, World War I broke out. In August 1914, Britain declared war on Germany, and the British Dominion of Canada became involved. On September 8 of that year, Bethune enlisted in the Army in Valkadia, Quebec, and was the tenth to enlist in Toronto. The fighting was fierce, with more than 50,000 Canadian soldiers killed. Bethune served in Canada's Second Field Medical Corps, served as a stretcher on the French front, wounded his left leg in the Second Battle of Ipré in northwestern Belgium, recovered from his wounds, and returned to Canada to complete his studies at the end of the war.
After graduating from university, Bethune practiced medicine in Canada and also served as a captain in the army. In October 1921, Bethune went to the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh to take the Royal Society of Surgeons examination, and was admitted as a member on 5 February of the following year, and subsequently became a surgeon at the West London Hospital. While at a West London hospital, Bethune became acquainted with Miss Frances Campbell Penney, the daughter of a judge in Edinburgh. On August 13, 1923, he married Frances and went on a honeymoon to the Channel Islands. They traveled to Switzerland, Italy, France, Austria and Germany for 6 months to observe the demonstration surgeries of famous European surgeons in various countries. In early 1924, they returned to Canada and later went to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, to study neurosurgery. In the fall of 1924, Bethune moved to Detroit, Michigan, where he began practicing medicine in early December.
Lung infections fight the disease
In the summer of 1926, something unfortunate happened, and Bethune fell ill with an infectious disease, tuberculosis. In October of that year, he returned to his hometown for treatment at the Calido Sanatorium in Gravenhurst, Canada. On December 18, he was transferred to the Trudeau Sanatorium in Adirondack Mountain on the shore of Saranac Lake, New York, USA. At the end of May 1927, feeling that his condition had improved, he returned to Detroit to practice medicine, and because his condition deteriorated, he had to return to the Trudeau Sanatorium.
During this time, Bethune endured all kinds of torture, and in November 1927, he created nine murals, "The Journey of a Tuberculosis Patient", predicting that he would die of tuberculosis. In these paintings, Bethune depicts the source of tuberculosis bacteria as a bat-like animal.
In the prenatal part, he painted the womb as a dark cave where the baby had been attacked by the tuberculosis bacillus. The germ is represented by a red wyvern, a prehistoric reptile with a long beak, sharp teeth and bat-like wings. He sighed with the following verse: "Oh, newcomer, our protagonist, the embryo is in danger, the tuberculosis bat is like blood stained, what a murderous." ”
Later, he painted such a picture: "In the canyon of the capital city, the flowers are full of charm, but they cannot compete with the clouds and fog barriers of tuberculosis bats - in the dirty atmosphere, layers of shadows, he has gradually become terminally ill." "Chronic disease devours its life, coughs, spits, describes withering ..."
In the last group of frescoes, I paint myself in the arms of the angel of death, accompanied by a poem like this: "Dear God of Death, you benevolent angel, let me die in your gentle arms." The stars in the sky are bright, the sun has long gone, I finished a small scene, and the boring drama ended. ”
However, Bethune did not succumb to the disease. He was a doctor who actively cooperated with treatment during his hospitalization and read extensive medical books. Once, he stumbled upon John Alexander's Surgical Treatment of Tuberculosis, which inspired him greatly. The author, John Alexander, is a renowned thoracic surgeon who details the doctor's pioneering "artificial pneumothorax therapy."
Artificial pneumothorax therapy has a certain danger, because it is necessary to artificially cut the chest cavity to cause pneumothorax, atmospheric pressure lung retraction, volume reduction, the pus and substances in the tuberculosis bulb in the lungs will be discharged and healed, and when the healing is almost complete, the gas is withdrawn and the chest cavity is closed. In Bethune's time, effective anti-tuberculosis drugs had not yet been developed, and this dangerous practice was once adopted by countries.
He went to the doctors at the Trudeau Sanatorium and asked for the treatment. The doctors told them that "this therapy is immature and dangerous", but he is not afraid of danger and insists on trying it. On October 27, 1927, at his own request, he tried artificial pneumothorax therapy with a certain degree of danger, and finally miraculously recovered through this immature therapy within two months.
On December 10, 1927, Bethune was cured and discharged from the hospital. Bethune used the rewritten Apostles' Creed as a Christmas card, writing: "I believe in the resurrection of a healthy body from the sick body and the eternal care of the tuberculosis patient." He looked back on this experience of struggling with the disease and said with emotion: "Fear is the biggest destroyer of happiness, and most fear is groundless." It can be said that people live by hope. Don't be disappointed, be in a good mood and stay calm, follow the rules, and carry the game through to the end. ”
Bethune did not know if he would recover due to tuberculosis, and divorced his wife, Frances, while he was undergoing artificial pneumothorax therapy. After recovering from illness, he remarried to Frances. Before coming to China, Bethune visited Frances in Montreal. Before his death, he made a will and asked the International Committee for China To Take Care of her.
North American doctors are committed to scientific research
This illness led Bethune to devote himself to the study of tuberculosis infection. After recovering from his illness, Bethune immediately went to the Thunder Creek State Early Tuberculosis Hospital in New York for further study. Three months later, he returned to Canada and worked until the fall of 1932 as Director of Surgery at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal, Quebec, and first assistant to the renowned North American surgeon Dr. Edward Archibald. He has published a number of academic papers in Canadian and American medical journals, such as: "The New Combination of Air Pump and Artificial Pneumothorax", "Calling on Tuberculosis Patients to Implement Compression Therapy as soon as possible", "Bacterial Diagnosis of Lung Spirochetes", etc., becoming a well-known doctor in North America. In May 1932, Bethune went to hermann Kiefer Hospital in Detroit, USA, to temporarily chair the Department of Thoracic Surgery, and in the same year was elected a member of the American Society of Thoracic Surgery and served as a member of the five-member board of directors of the society. In January 1935, Bethune returned to Montreal to serve as director of thoracic surgery at the newly established Sacred Heart Hospital in North Cardiville.
In order to better treat diseases, Bethune became an inventor. In the course of his medical practice, he was diligent in his thinking and excellence, developing and innovating surgical instruments such as scapular lifters and retractors, long rib scissors or rib scissors and rib peelers. The largest of these instruments was made under the guidance and direct supervision of Bethune by workers at the Sacred Heart Hospital in Montreal. One company purchased Dr. Bethune's patent and produced a medical device named "Bethune": Bethune's chest injection device "Nurse's Friend" and Bethune's lung tourniquet, among others.
The people are calling for reform
Suffering from tuberculosis made Bethune think deeply about the social medical system, he said: "The poor have tuberculosis of the poor, the rich have the tuberculosis of the rich, the rich recover and the poor die." In 1934, Bethune gave a speech at the Canadian Progressive Association in Montreal, advocating that the government fund tuberculosis fight. He has his own outpatient clinic on the outskirts of Mongolia and provides free treatment for poor patients every Saturday afternoon. In August 1935, during a trip to Leningrad, the Soviet Union, to attend the International Physiology Congress, Bethune visited hospitals and nursing homes to study Soviet measures to prevent tuberculosis. After returning to China, he expressed his impressions of visiting the Soviet Union at a rally held by the "Friends of the Soviet Union" Association in Mongolia, hoping to learn from the Soviet medical system, and also initiated the establishment of the Montreal People's Health Association, as its president. The main purpose of the association is to improve the people's medical and health conditions, and there are more than 100 doctors, nurses and social workers.
Since then, he has vigorously promoted social medicine at medical conferences in Canada and the United States. "The government should regard the protection of people's health as its primary obligation and responsibility to its citizens," he said. Let us redefine the moral standards of the medical profession——— not as a professional norm among doctors, but as a basic moral and righteous code between the medical profession and the people. On April 17, 1936, Bethune delivered a lecture entitled "Purging Self-Interest from Medical Careers" at a symposium held by the Montreal Society of Internal and External Sciences. In July and August, on the eve of the Ontario parliamentary elections, he issued a declaration to the Montreal People's Health Association to the candidate, the Governor of Quebec, and the medical and religious communities, recommending the implementation of socialized medicine. He presented the Government with a comprehensive and complete programme to provide planned medical care for the entire population.
From the perspective of thinking about social medicine, Bethune further established his faith. In November 1935, Bethune joined the Communist Party of Canada. In October 1936, he went to Spain as the captain of the Canadian medical team. During the Spanish Civil War, Bethune designed a mobile blood transfusion team to go directly to the front line to treat the wounded, which greatly reduced the death rate of the wounded, and in some theaters of operations, it was reduced by as much as 75%.
After the outbreak of the All-out War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression in China, in August 1937, Bethune expressed his willingness to go to China to support the War of Resistance Against Japan in a speech at Salmon Bay in British Columbia, Canada. In October, he went to the United States to discuss and prepare for the aid to China with the China Aid Committee and the Peace and Democracy League, and used donations from the two organizations to purchase medical supplies. On January 8, 1938, Bethune led a Canadian-American medical team from Vancouver to China via The Empress of Asia via Hong Kong. He wrote to his wife, Frances, saying: "Spain and China are both part of the same battlefield. I'm going to China now because I think that's where the need is most urgent; that's where I can make the most of a difference. ”
In late January 1938, Bethune arrived in Hong Kong. Song Qingling recalled: "Dr. Bai's coming to China was initiated by us and tried our best to provide him with all the items he needed. In this year, Soong Ching Ling established the League for the Defense of China in Hong Kong, calling on international peace figures to aid China, and the Committee for International Aid to China in New York was one of the organizations that cooperated with the League in its work. On August 15, 1939, Bethune wrote to a friend: "Can you get the Committee for China Aid to send money... Maybe they should send $1,000 to the League for the Defense of China in Hong Kong. However, shortly after he wrote this letter, in the early morning of November 12, Bethune died in Huangshikou Village, Tang County, Hebei Province, and has been buried in the land of China ever since.
Bethune was deeply in love with Chinese people. He said, "What else do you say about Chinese who doesn't understand feelings!" Here I found the most humane comrades. They have suffered cruelty, but they know what mercy is; they have tasted pain but know how to laugh; they have suffered infinitely, but they have maintained their patience, optimism, and quiet wisdom. I was already in love with them; I knew they loved me too. ”
(The author is director of the Social Education Department of the Research Center of China Soong Ching Ling Foundation)