Canada’s Dr. Norman Bethune is best known as a hero in the People’s Republic of China and for his impact on Sino-Canadian relations, according to Library and Archives Canada. The online site also claims Bethune gained a reputation as a gifted surgeon, an inventor, a political activist and an early proponent of a universal health-care system.
But in 12 years of research that included scouring obscure archives in Canada, Great Britain and the U.S., and interviewing people who knew Bethune, local author and psychology professor David Lethbridge discovered little-known details about Canada’s famous doctor, who was also an accomplished artist.
These compelling details are included in Lethbridge’s new book, Norman Bethune in Spain.
“It is a psychobiography, a biography of Bethune from a psychological point of view,” says Lethbridge, who is proud of his book that contains facts he says other people missed when they did the research.
“I found diaries that had been written at the time by people who had encountered Bethune,” says Lethbridge.
One of the things Lethbridge discovered was that not only did Bethune transfuse blood from person to person, but was able to take blood from cadavers on the Spanish war front and transfuse it to wounded soldiers.
“He was responsible for thousands of saved lives – some scholars have said his transfusions were responsible for 80 per cent of all transfusions during the (Spanish Civil) war,” he says. “I wouldn’t have known it if I hadn’t followed an obscure little lead from a digital copy of a very small handwritten note by Dr. Herman Muller, a Nobel prize winner for genetic research.”
Another aspect of the complex man Lethbridge uncovered was his traumatic childhood.
Bethune referred to his mother as a dragon, says Lethbridge, and the many paintings of dragons he created featured a dragon holding small, naked children by the neck.
“When he thought he was dying, he created a mural in a circle; his circle of his life all around a room,” Lethbridge says. “The very first picture which he titles “womb and fetus,” shows a dark black circle with a little fetal Bethune – a dark unpleasant cave – and in the womb, tearing at him, was this red dragon.”
Lethbridge says other biographies describing Bethune’s parents as supportive and nurturing are not accurate and that Bethune suffered irreparably from his early upbringing.
Bethune visited the Shuswap in 1937 during his cross-Canada tour and while he also appeared in Vernon and Kelowna, the biggest draw was in Salmon Arm.
“They had to put big speakers outside to accommodate people who couldn’t get into the hall,” Lethbridge says.
Lethbridge earned his bachelor and master’s degrees in psychology in Montreal, and his PhD at the University of Regina.
A professor at Okanagan College, he says the Salmon Arm campus is committed to offering variety of evening courses so people who work during the day could advance beyond high school with introductory courses.
Another benefit, he says, is the less-threatening environment with smaller classes and ample one-on-one help.
“The kind of courses we teach are the same courses that are offered at UBC or McGill, and taught by people with PhDs.”
