By Ted Allan Books This Time a Better Earth, 1940 The Scalpel, the Sword, the Story of Dr. Norman Bethune (co-author with Sydney Gordon), 1952, 1971, 1989 Quest for Pajaro, 1970 Willie, the Squowse, 1978, 1984 Love Is a Long Shot, 1984 Don't You Know Anybody Else?, 1985 Films Lies My Father Told Me, 1976 Falling in Love Again, 1981 It Rained All Night, 1981 Love Streams, 1984 Bethune: The Making of a Hero, 1989 Plays The Money Makers, 1956 Gog and Magog (with Roger MacDougall), 1959 Legend of Paradise, 1959 -The Secret of the World, 1962 Oh What a Lovely War (stage treatment), 1964 I've Seen You Cut Lemons, 1970 Love Streams, 1982 The Third Day Comes, 1982 Everyone Else, a Stranger, 1984 Lies My Father Told Me, 1984 Willie, the Squowse, 1987 Chu Chem a Zen Buddhist Hebrew Musical, 1989 a» OT)e Scalpel, the Sword ^^tTOWMW«*ww**TOlTOWMWWWWWW«M*«*lw«^^ %s» '•.ct r^£ STORY OF DR- NORM/IN BETHUNE • by t 'TED ALLAN ^»<^ SYDNEY GORDON -V.^H ''.i''-'"!:'^ includes an 8-page section ^; ,^: of photographs rk M&S To those for whom he worked and died; and more personally, to Julie, Norman and Susan if". Copyright © 1952 by Ted Allan and Sydney Gordon Revised editions 1971, 1989 First published 1952 by Little, Brown and Company, Boston, and simultaneously in Canada by McClelland and Stewart Limited All rights reserved. The use of any pan of this publication, reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior consent of the publisher is an infringement of the copyright law. Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data Allan, Ted The scalpel, the sword ; the story of Dr. Norman Bethune ISBN 0771007299 1. Bethune, Norman, 1890-1939. 2. Surgeons -- Canada - Biography. 3. Surgeons - China - Biography. I. Gordon, Sydney. II. Title. R464.B4A55 1989 617'.092'4 C890947244 All photos in the 8-page picture insert courtesy of Ted Allan. Printed and bound in Canada McClelland & Stewart Inc. The Canadian Publishers 481 University Avenue Toronto, Ontario M5G 2E9 - C^THE scarborough i'UBLICDBRARY boar? Contents s4 /"-- foreword ---- vi Preface by Madame Sun Yat-seft ix Foreword to the Revised Edition xiii part one: Death and Birth i part two : The Enemy -- Tuberculosis 41part three : The Enemy--Fascism ^oo part four: The Enemy--Those Who Make the Wounds 169 Epilogue ; y^ ^'"^y- Foreword the material on which this biography is based was gathered in the course of research that spanned eleven years and followed Dr. Bethune's life from Gravenhurst, Ontario, through most of the cities of Canada, the major cities of the United States, to Britain, France, Spain, Italy, Austria, Switzerland, the Soviet Union and finally China. Both of us had to acquaint ourselves with Bethune's Canadian background, the origins of the Spanish war of 1936-1939, the evolution of modern China, the wide interplay of world events which helped shape Bethune's life and to which he reacted in his own characteristic manner. Though Bethune first won international fame as a thoracic surgeon, he was also in varying degrees a painter, poet, soldier, critic, teacher, lecturer, inventor, medical writer and theorist. He lived on many levels, had many careers, was involved with many people, and became a stormy petrel of some of the decisive happenings of our era. One of us knew Bethune intimately and shared with him part of the agony of the Spanish war. The other knew him only casually in Montreal but followed his career closely until his death. We were thus in the fortunate position of being able to combine the subjective insight of an intimate friend with the detached objectivity of an observer. From the beginning, then, we can lay claim to having known Bethune from both the "inside" and the "outside." ' He left behind him so many vivid memoirs, diaries, letters and other writings that he exercised a potent posthumous influence on the style of this book and made our task immeasurably simpler. In general, we have avoided using explanatory notes because in compiling our sources for statements, conversations and incidents, we found that our footnotes were so numerous as to constitute almost another book! Therefore, wherever a source is not given we would like the reader to know that all the con- VI FOREWORD versations were either heard by one of us, described in Bethune's letters, or recalled by his intimates. Often, in the course of the book, we refer to Bethune's thoughts: his innermost feelings. In every case we are paraphrasing his own words, or actually quoting them as they appeared in his letters and diaries, or as he expressed them to one of the authors or to a friend. In the acknowledgments we have listed many people who have helped us to make this book possible. But here, without any invidious comparisons, we feel it necessary to single out a few names for special mention. These include his mother, the late Mrs. Elizabeth Ann Bcthune, his brother, the late Malcolm Bethune, and his sister, Mrs. Janet "Stiles, who supplied us with all the necessary early family data. Frances Campbell Penney, Bethune's former wife, gave us much valuable information which would otherwise have been unavailable. To four people we are indebted for the fact that the material on Bethune's life in China is in many respects the most detailed and the most documented. Tung Yueh Chian, his "other self," his interpreter and friend who was with him during most of his life in China, supplied us with invaluable personal notes. Soong Ching-ling (Madame Sun Yat-sen), whose preface opens our book, was instrumental in having all of Betbune's papers and diaries, during his stay in China, made available to us. Israel Epstein, author of perhaps the best book on the background of modern China1 in the English language, deserves special thanks for his untiring efforts to assemble Bethune's papers and diaries. Without his work in China and the additional notes and documents supplied by Madame Sun, it would have been difficult to describe Bethune's last, climactic years. In addition, we Were immeasurably helped by the lengthy published chronicle written by the Chinese writer Chou En Fou on Bethune's work in China. Chou's firsthand account was important corroborative material for Bethune's personal diaries, especially with regard to events nowhere else as yet described in any language. Chou's chronicle, as well as other "npublished Chinese material, was translated for us by Gerald Chen (Chen Wei Shi). rurther, this book received the wholehearted co-operation of Bethune's ^ rhSvy.nf'n'shl:d Revolution in China. Vll FOREWORD ?1 medical colleagues, many of them now world-famous in their respective fields. We refer particularly to his colleagues in the American Tuberculosis Association, the Council of the American Association of Thoracic Surgery the University of Toronto, McGill University, Trudeau Sanatorium (Saranac Lake, N.Y.), the Royal Victoria Hospital (Montreal), the Sacre Cceur Hospital, the Federal Department of Health and Pensions, and of the Montreal Medico-Chirurgical Society. While the book has been checked by seven different physicians, we assume all responsibilities for any medical errors. I THE AUTHORS Toronto, i^y. Vlll Kff „ Preface ?; „. !;gS;- ;K,.:t 1^ '"' in comparison with the human world of past times, our world is highly complex. Because of its highly developed communications, events in every part of the globe and of human society are closely interconnected. There are no isolated disasters and there is no progress that does not help the progress of all. This situation is reflected in the minds of men. The contents of men's minds have also become world-wide in scope and complexity. It is not enough for a man, seeking the welfare of his own people and country, to consider his domestic situation in relation to his immediate neighbors. World trends encompass every one of us, and it is by participating in them and contributing to them that we influence our own future. The highest task before men's minds today is to understand, to fight against the forces of regression and death, to strengthen and convert into reality the possibilities which our world offers, as no previous world has offered, for a fuller life for all men. The hero in any age is one who carries out with a surpassing degree of devotion, determination, courage, and skill the main tasks with which his times challenge every man. Today these tasks are world-wide, and the contemporary hero -- whether he works at home or in a foreign land -- is a world hero, not only in historical retrospect but now. >.,,.';'!'' Norman Bethune was such a hero. He lived, worked and fought in three countries-- in Canada, which was his native land; in Spain, where forward-looking men of all natiorts flocked to fight in the first great people's resistance to the darkness of Nazism and fascism; and in China, where he helped our guerrilla armies to capture and build new bases of national freedom and democracy in territory which the military fascists of Japan fondly hoped they had conquered, and where he helped us forge the |ynighty peoples' army which finally liberated all China. In a special sense IX PREFACE he belongs to the peoples of these three countries. In a larger sense he belongs to all who fight against oppression of nations and of peoples. Norman Bethune was a doctor, and he fought with and within his profession with the weapons he knew best. He was an expert and a pioneer in his own science--he kept his weapons sharp and fresh. And he devoted his great skill, consciously and consistently, to the vanguards of the struggle against fascism and imperialism. To him fascism was the disease holding a greater evil for mankind than any other, a plague that destroys minds and bodies by tens of millions, and by denying the value of man also denies the value of all the sciences which have arisen to minister to man's health, vigor and growth. The value of the techniques Norman Bethune taught his Chinese students under Japanese gunfire was determined by the purpose for which they were used. Germany and Japan were countries of high technical development, but because they were led by enemies of human progress their science and their skills brought only misfortune to mankind. Fighters for the people have the duty of attaining the highest technical skill, because only in their hands can technique really serve man. Dr. Bethune was the first medical man to bring blood banks to the battlefields, and his transfusions saved the lives of hundreds of fighters for the Spanish Republic. In China he launched and practiced the slogan, "Doctors! Go to the wounded! Do not wait for them to come to you." In an environment totally different, and far more backward than that of Spain, he organized a procedure of guerrilla medical service which saved tens of thousands of our best and bravest. His plans and practice were based not only on medical science and experience, but also on military and political study and experience on the fronts of the people's war. Bethune in Spain and China was a pioneer in the battlefield of medicine. He understood thoroughly the conditions, strategy, tactics and terrain of the struggle, and he knew what could be expected of medical workers who were free men, fighting beside other free men for their homes and their future. The doctors, nurses and orderlies whom he trained learned to regard themselves not only as technical auxiliaries but as front-line soldiers, with tasks as responsible and important as those of the fighting branches. PREFACE These things Dr. Bethune accomplished amid conditions such as no medical man without a broad understanding of his tasks could possibly have coped with. He accomplished them in mountain villages in the most primitive parts of China, almost without any previous knowledge of the language, of the people among whom he worked, and without any strength in his own tuberculosis-ravaged body apart from his burning conviction and iron will. j| His broad world understanding, the sources of power that he drew from it, were the things that give his work more universal meaning for our time than that of other medical heroes who labored againsf similar heart-breaking conditions, such as Father Damien or Dr. Grenfell in Labrador. What killed Dr. Bethune? Dr. Bethune fell in the fight against fascism and reaction to which he had given his passion, skill and strength. The region in which he worked was not only blockaded by the Japanese enemy. It was blockaded also by Chiang Kai-shek's reactionary government which had always been ready to compromise victory rather than fight a people's war. The men whom Bethune fought for were adjudged unworthy not only of arms and ammunition but even of medical supplies to heal their wounded. They died of infections because they could not receive modern antidotes. Bethune died of septicemia, the result of operating without rubber gloves and of having no sulfa drugs for treatment. The International Peace Hospitals which Dr. Bethune founded now work under new conditions--China, at last, is free. But after Bethune died his appointed successor. Dr. Kisch, who worked beside him in Spain, was prevented by Chiang Kai-shek's blockade from assuming his post. Dr. Kotnis of the Indian Medical Units, who finally took up the directorship of one of Dr. Bethune's hospitals and valiantly carried on his work, also died at his post -- again because there were no drugs on hand to treat him. Dr. Bethune and Dr. Kotnis were two among many victims, who, were it not for the blockade, might still be living and fighting in the cause of the world's free peoples. I am very happy to introduce the life of Dr. Norman Bethune to greater numbers of people than have hitherto been able to acquaint themselves XI PREFACE with the life of this hero of our time, who symbolizes so nobly the common stake of all people in the fight for freedom. His life, death and heritage have been particularly close to me, not only because of the great serv- I ices he performed in our peoples' war of national liberation, but also because of my own activity in the China Welfare League of which I am chairman. The League has been directed toward securing support for the Bcthune Peace Hospital and Bethunc Medical School network that carries | on his work and his memory. The new China will never forget Dr. Bethune. He was one of those who helped us become free. His work and his memory will remain with a™ us forever. Sf SOONG CHING-UNG (MADAME SUN YATSEN) Xll Foreword to the Revised Edition In the nineteen years since its first appearance in Canada, The Scalpel, the Sword has made its way round the world. It has been published in nineteen languages, including Serbian, Hebrew and Chinese. It has sold over a million copies, and is still appearing in new editions on three continents. It appears to be the most widely translated, widely published book in Canadian history. Dr. Norman Bethune, his life and his work, have been accepted as part of their own heritage by North American students, Dutch workers, German medical men, Italian intellectuals, many thousands of dispossessed people in India, African freedom-fighters, and the vast masses on the Chinese mainland. .^'.' What is the reason for the tremendous impact Bethune's life. story has had all over the world? The answer to this question can best be sought in the book itself. But certain preliminary points should be made. Bethune was a unique Canadian, a unique human being, yet shaped by both his country and the contemporary world. He was truly a neoRenaissance figure, driven by the necessity to experience and enrich all of life. To him, encrusted conventions were silly; love, a great hunger and an affirmation of life; medicine and surgery his art, his work, and his commitment; the growing brutality of our world a personal wound. At the end, his confrontation with death as surgeon-soldier was a natural response to the cry of the starving, the downtrodden, the brave on all the battlefields of freedom. He was a man who achieved painful consciousness of his weaknesses. °ut rather than succumbing, he achieved greatness in vanquishing them. deliberately he abandoned the role of sybarite, roisterer and roue, to ecome the front-line doctor, the guerilla in straw sandals, the revoluxin FOREWORD TO THE REVISED EDITION tionary, for whom life was no more than a few handfuls of rice for sustenance, and surgery performed in the midst of bloody battles. He knew comradeship with strangers who called him brother, and his indestructible strength lay in his vast dream of remaking the world. At the end, his personal life had become completely merged with the fate of the world's peoples. Today, wherever their cause has succeeded, he is honored. Wherever they must still fight on, he is a banner, and a call to arms. Such a man brings hope to all who yearn for an end to wars, to bloodshed, to the disintegration of society and personality which torments so much of mankind. But he also disturbs the philistines and the smugly comfortable, inspiring fear and even secret hatred among those who still refuse to admit that the world is changing before our eyes. " It is no accident that he has recently become the central figure in a number of new literary and film activities -- projects concerning his life undertaken, and others being planned -- all without reference to the present^ biography. These activities are international in scope, but have been most intensively pursued in Canada. To the extent that such a renewal of interest demonstrates the power and attraction of the man, it can be accepted as an accolade. To the extent that it attempts to distort and falsify his image, it must be instantly dismissed. One example is sufficient to demonstrate this overt game of plagarism and distortion. A recent Canadian novel uses Bethune as one of its three central characters. In a sense, he emerges as the most potent of the three. Though he is, of course, given another name, his identity is clear. But it is at this point that the novelist departs from even an approximation of reality. Bethune is deliberately translated into an "anti-Bethune," into the exact opposite of what he was, and what he became. The novel presents him, not as a conscious revolutionary, who died as surgeon-soldier on the battlefield, but as a disillusioned idealist, who winds up broken and defeated, bitterly antagonistic to everything he once believed in. This is not only a pitiful perversion of the truth - it is cynicism at its worst. It is also proof that Bethune, today, is as alive as any man can be; that he is still a potent challenge to those who fear everything he represents, and everything that he died for. It is for all these reasons that this new edition of The Scalpel, the xiv FOREWORD TO THE REVISED EDITION Sword comes at a particularly appropriate moment. Whatever its merits and its weaknesses, it should help to re-establish facts, confound the cynics, and inspire a new generation. It will remind us again that man need not live, nor end his life, in hopelessness - but can experience greatness of thought and of action. We need to be reminded that there are men, heroic in stature and action, who bring hope and inspiration to the rest of us. Bethune was such a man. y THE AUTHORS, 1971 ^/ XV PART ONE Death and Birth WK 10^, North China. . . . m 11 hey brought him out of the hills over the twisting, narrow passes where ; enemy feared to set foot and where the horses no longer led but followed. They carried him on one of the litters for the wounded. At first he had waved aside the litter-bearers with an angry toss of his head and mounted his brown mare, sitting in the saddle with his left arm dragging. But before they had gone many li from Sky-Kissing Peak he had fallen into a dead faint. When he awoke to find himself on a stretcher suspended from two crossbars, moving rhythmically with the motion of the litter-bearers, he only rolled his eyes to look at them and made no protest, y^fi For a day and a night they crawled up and down the mountain wasteland of West Hopei, a silent, dogged caravan of men, horses, and mules. By day the November sun was like a great, single eye, filmed over as if with tears, staring at them out of furrowed brows of clouds. At night the stars hung low above the cliffs, as if to touch them with a cold warmth and light their way. By day and by night it seemed they need only reach out to touch the sky. With the sound of artillery still echoing like distant thunder behind them, they made their way through dust, through mists spread out over the hollows like silvery lakes, passes cut out of sheer rock, wild brush where every step was a struggle. Then they broke out of the towering mountains, and stocky Tung Yueh Chian, leading now on the brown mare, raised his hand. They halted, gazing at the broad valley below, and Fong spoke: "It will be Yellow Stone Village there," he said, pointing, and they began the descent. '¥ I DEATH AND BIRTH THE SCALPEL, THE SWORD Por an hour they zigzagged down the mountainside until they could ing above them, his arms outstretched to reassure them, his green eyes clearly see the brown houses of Yellow Stone Village and the tiny figures smiling as always. But as they watched he twisted suddenly in pain, racing in from the fields. When they reached the valley a crowd had tearing the blankets from him, and they saw the bandages and the path gathered at the northern gate, and as they approached the village a tri- of hideously discolored, swollen flesh reaching to the shoulder. umphi.nt cheer echoed through the valley. . They fell back with a groan, the children clinging to their elders' legs, "Pai Chu En! Pai Chu En!" the litter-bearers wincing. At the edge of the village the people chanted the name, waving their Pai Chu En opened his eyes as if from a deep sleep, raised himself up hands and smiling broadly. But as the brown mare reached the gate and on an elbow and looked about till he saw Tung. He spoke for a while in the caravan entered, the shouts of welcome died on their lips. With the strange language that only Tung understood, and fell back wearily troubled faces they watched Fong, slumped forward in the saddle, his again. head bowed, pain and defeat in his eyes. They moved apart to let Fong Tung dismounted and faced the villagers. "We must stop here," he pass, murmuring among themselves. Where was Pai Chu En? Why did said heavily. "We are a day and a night from the front without pause. He the procession enter tlie village so silently? Why did the littcr-bearers walk can travel no further. He must have rest so that he can defeat his great with their eyes fixed on the ground? Then they saw the stretcher coming sickness." ^,.; slowly through the gate, and their faces grew wrinkled with torment and One of the elders stepped forward. He stood before the stretcher and disbelief. { bowed gravely in the traditional Hopei manner. "At first we thought it Tung reined in the mare, the caravan came to a stop, the litter-bearers might be the enemy coming out of the hills, and we were filled with knelt to lower the stretcher carefully to the ground, hanging their heads worry," he said. "Then we recognized the brown mare and the litteras if they felt themselves accountable for their burden, bearers, and we were filled with joy. Now we are filled with grief. . . . The villagers slowly assembled about the stretcher. Yes, it was Pai Better that it should have been the enemy, better Chian Pi Ching Teh} Chu En, the foreign one. White Seek Grace. Only two weeks ago he had better that our homes should now be ashes, and our families scattered in passed like a whirlwind through the village, his proud, white head held the mountains, than that you should return to us in this suffering." high as he galloped before the caravan into the hills. Only two weeks fbi Chu En turned his head and extended his hand vaguely. ago he had left for the front, and now he lay before them, his head thrown "We must have a suitable place," Tung said, "till we are able to move back, his eyes shut, his beard pointing towards the sky. They looked on mm again." in baffled silence. Yes, it was Pai Chu En, but how could this be -- that h< ^e old man rose. "At the house of Yu the landlord. His is the best should lie here like the dead? In all the liberated areas he had worked his hous^ in the village." wonders. His face had lit up the villages of Shansi. He had blazed hr ^"^Y followed the stretcher to Yu's courtyard, waiting outside, while way across the Middle Plain, across Hopei and Shensi. He had made fool; l e Aildren watched their elders, quick to read the signs on their parents' of the invaders even in the occupied territories. His name had been like ces! sensitive to the menace hanging over the valley, the mountains of a sword against the enemy. Could this be ? "P"'tne whole vast world of China, and wondering now at the sorrow They looked to Tung for a sign that all would be well, then looked back ore terrible than the enemy that had cast its shadow over the village. . . . at Pai Chu En. Surely of all the wonders he had performed he had some a e in the afternoon there was a second alarm. This time it was a still left for himself; surely he would rise up in a moment, straight and senger hastening through the mountains from Staff Headquarters. erect, with the awe and power of a pillar of fire, his white mane tower- i-i-he slogan of "scorched earth." THE SCALPEL, THE SWORD DEATH AND BIRTH He had set out on direct orders from General Nieh as soon as H tv>h'nd the mountains. The first faint sounds of life came from quarters had received the wireless message from the front the day bef n1 n The news had caused great consternation, and had been relayed to M ^le v1 he now?" Tung asked the question without looking up. Tse-tung in Yenan immediately. General Nieh had been instructed ^ -c 0\ buried his head in his hands. "My heart was filled with gladness urgent messages from Yenan to keep Chu Teh and Mao Tse-tung i °i as able to attend our teacher. Now it has turned to stone. He is formed of all developments, and to spare no cost in the effort to g, k and I am helpless." He raised his head. "What shall we tell GenPai Chu En safely to Staff Headquarters. Though worn and hungry fron \e ] Nieh and Mao Tsetung?" his journey the messenger refused food impatiently. "Pai Chu En is i( "i-ip called me his 'other self,'" Tung said, "and it seems as if I am dying and in Wu Tai Shan and Yenan they are waiting for word," he sail We must go back to him. We must not let him die." "Do you know what our men will say if anything goes wrong, and d in me courtyard Tung found a rough bench, placed it beneath the you offer me food ? I want to see him at once." ndow of Pai Chu En's room and took up the vigil. Fong led Nieh's representative into the house, thinking it would t Nieht came. A shadow glided through the courtyard. "This is the house good for Pai Chu En to know that the vigil was being kept not only hen where Pai Chu En lies?" a voice whispered. beside the ('ang2 in the house of Yu, not only here in Yellow Ston. "Yes." Tung turned to see a young man in the padded blue cotton of Village, not only at Sky-Kissing Peak, where the men had watched him (he guerrillas. leave with the sickness upon him, but in all the territories of Chin "We are a detachment of the People's Guard," the soldier said. "We Cha-Chi. are passing through on our way to Sky-Kissing Peak. In the village The villagers waited for word, but as the hours passed and the twfhey have told us the grief-heavy news. In the name of Pai Chu En we remained in the house, they slipped away. The men returned to the fields have adopted a resolution of self-sacrifice. Our whole unit has pledged turning often as they worked to shield their eyes from the sun and loolthat when we reach the front we will offer ourselves for any duty as an back at the village with a preoccupied air. From their meager stores th example to the others--self-sacrifice till death, if necessary. . . . You will women brought baskets of chicken, millet pancakes, eggs, vegetable tell Pai Chu En?" % :; leaving them at Yu's door. In the single rutted street the children hushe "Yes," Tung said. "I will tell him." one another at their play. Shou, the "little devil,"3 crept to Pai Chu En The soldier saluted and marched silently into the night. Then Fong door, refusing to leave and asking all who went in or out, "Will he Icame to sit beside Tung, asking, "Has he called?" well enough to leave tomorrow? Shall I bring him some food? Can I as "No," Tung said. "He lies quietly. Once he rose to sit at the table, him if he would like some food?" writing...." All through the night Fong remained in the room. In the morning 1 "It is strange that he should still have strength to rise, or to sit at the came out with a distracted look on his long face and made off rapid table." Fong sat sunk in thought, looking in at the room bathed in the through the village. Tung found him outside the village gate, sitting ccherry glow of the J(ang fire. "What would he write now ? What is in a rock, gazing vacantly into the distance. Tung squatted silently besi(his mind, I wonder?" , , him, tracing patterns in the dusty earth with a stick. The sun was sti Perhaps the bitterness of things he remembers," Tung said. "It is a "'ght of many stars, such as always pleased him, and I have heard from ^^^^S^r^^y on the "Lon, March" w.e ".Gt3^ memories as there are stars- In the mountains' when the named "little devils." ; . r " Kv ^s like the jeweled ceiling of a Buddhist temple, he would I / THE SCALPEL, THE SWORD say to me: 'My other self, these Hopei nights are like the nights T L when I was a boy in my own country. . . .' Always his other s // And now there was a soldier here . . . from a unit passing \\\ ' They go with a resolution of self-sacrifice in the name of Pai Chu F they too are his other selves. ..." "I--you--they ... But let us go in ... We must not leave him a, longer...." ^S Tung began to weep, quietly, without shame. "I shall come ii^B moment . . . Forgive my weak tears. They are a spring that will so run dry. It is more bitter for him than for all the others I have seen he dies he will be dying the second time. And he is only 49 years old. I you understand? Every man dies--so many of our own have died_! all of us have one life and one passing, and he has had many lives a this is his second death. Did you know?--This is the second time he dying, and there are not enough tears in all China to mourn his seca passing. . . ." Fong rose heavily. "Not in all China," he said. "No, Comrade Tung, a in all the world will there be enough tears. ..." 2. Detroit, U.S.A. --1926. . . . he was thirty-six years old, and according to the medical evidence was dying. yS He lay in his bed, and considered how it had all started and was nc ending. History would pass him by without the merest footnote, he told himsi not knowing that even in 1926 history was already marshaling great lan and obscure men for wars, revolts, mass murder, heroism. Nor did I know that he would yet taste the rushing darkness of death a second till that some day one quarter of the human race would sing his name Pai Chu En; that in mountain wildernesses he had never heard of, a ni 8 DEATH AND BIRTH i A Tung would watch over him recalling this, his first "dying." ^i, would come a time when he himself would write: "It is not e ^any men to face death, to learn the truth of one's life in facing ^\ h--and then to live." But now he knew only that he was dying, ea! that all his years had gone to waste. He told himself he didn't give a an gut why, he asked himself, had it happened? During the long Detroit nights, ghostly with the sounds and lights of , ^ggt below his window, he tossed between his tortured dreams and bitter wakings, exploring the chaotic pattern of his life, gritting his teeth atrainst remorse and self-pity, searching endlessly for the clues to his defeat and counting the search his only valid last will and testament. He remembered many faces, cities, hurts, vanities. He remembered home, the war, flight to Bohemia, debaucheries and exaltation, work, the thrill of flesh and clay in his hands, love turning moldy, fierce yearnings, frenzy, despair. Where, in the wilderness called living, had he lost his way? And why? ^A in .ftfte'i the manse, the frame church, the lakes he had loved to swim in, the hills where he had chased butterflies--they were part of Gravenhurst, Ontario, where he was born, and of his childhood. He remembered them all, and also the legends about the Bethunes who had migrated from northern France to Scotland in the mid-sixteenth century. They had been French Huguenots -- noncomtormists, he often thought with secret satisfaction, even three hundred years ago. For two centuries they gave Scotland doctors, teachers and clergymen, some becoming Hereditary Physicians to the Lords of the Isle of Skye. Then, in "ie eighteenth century, they migrated to Canada, where a Bethune became an Anglican bishop, the first Anglican in a long line of Presbyterians. Another Bethune became a principal of McGill University. Still another, orman's grandfather, turned to medicine and became one of Toronto's landing surgeons. ^ 9 THE SCALPEL, THE SWORD He remembered the stories told of his grandfather -- of his strong view unorthodoxy and scientific inclinations--and how the memory h ,1 served him as a childhood goal. And he remembered, above all, his farhc with his passion for the written and spoken word, and his mother, corn bining tenderness and strength with the quiet faith she had always had that he was destined for great things. At the age of twenty-one, his father, Malcolm Nicholson Bethune, had turned his back on the family traditions of medicine, pulpit and teaching for the more worldly pursuit of business. In 1880 he took ship for Hawaii with an older brother, Angus, to buy an orange grove and make his fortune. But in Honolulu he met Elizabeth Ann Goodwin, a Presbyterian missionary. The meeting changed his life. Miss Goodwin was the daughter of an English cabinet-maker.1 At the age of ten she had distributed religious pamphlets on the streets of her native London. At twenty-one she left England to become a missionary in Hawaii. She was filled with a vast love for mankind, a vast determination to save the heathen and spread the word of Christ. She turned her persuasiveness loose on Malcolm with such overwhelming effects that he j was converted to the church of his fathers, returned to Toronto with her blinding vision, and abandoned all thoughts of orange groves and fortunes in a flow of letters to Honolulu asking her to marry him. His persuasiveness was equal to hers. She soon followed him to Canada and married him. -- In 1888 their marriage was doubly climaxed: their first child, Janet, was born, arid Malcolm entered Knox College to become a minister. The transformation in his life, begun in Hawaii, was now complete. After he had been ordained he moved his small family to the northern Ontario town of Gravenhurst, where he took over the duties of his first congregation. And here, on a blustery March day in 1890, in the Presbyterian manse, a ' hundred yards up a dirt road from the clapboard church. Henry Norman Bethune was born -- their first son.2 As a preacher Malcolm Bethune held strongly personal views. Though 1 Henry Goodwin. 2 Their third child, Malcolm, was born three years later. 10 DEATH AND BIRTH win more than ordinary recognition for his powerfully deliv- he ^as mons he refused all calls to wealthy congregations. "The rich," cre -A "are too worldly." He would only accept pulpits in communities u^ he considered the people closer to his precepts of Christian living. w suit his ministry took the family from one small Ontario town to another in relatively quick succession. ^When Norman was two years old the Reverend Malcolm Bethune was I'll nsferred to Beaverton, then to Toronto, then, over a period of years, to Avimer Blind River, Sault Sainte Marie, Owen Sound and finally back to Toronto again. But for years Norman spent his summers at Gravenhurst. Here in the Muskoka Lakes, he developed a passion for swimming. Here, too he showed his first delight with the forests and the summer skies. Wherever the Bethune family found itself, home life was stimulating, rich and warm. For years a favorite diversion of the family was a word game. As they assembled for supper, each child who properly pronounced and defined a new word received a prize of five cents. Norman usually ran off with the prize, but shared his wealth with his older sister and younger brother. Another game that was Norman's alone was the moving of furniture. He loved to rearrange every room according to his own notions of form and color. The family considered him somewhat young to assume the role of interior decorator, but patiently indulged his fancies. From his earliest years his venturesome spirit and his intention of being a surgeon were taken for granted. By the time he was eight he had begun the messy but scientifically necessary job of dissecting flies and chicken bones. Later his personal investigation of anatomy led his mother to an investigation of her own when a dreadful odor suddenly pervaded the ouse one afternoon. She traced it to the attic, where she found Norman carefully cutting away the flesh from a cow's leg he had just boiled. "What are 7011 t^ing?" she asked in amazement. Laconically, he replied, "I'm getting the flesh off so I can examine the bones. They'll make good spcciGns. She hurriedly left him to his scientific pursuits and later that day e P aced the bones along the fence in the back yard to dry. It was also at oe 01 ^ght that he ceremoniously announced that he was no longer ca ^"'"y) but Norman, and hung the brass plate of his surgeon B"ndfather and namesake on his bedroom door. ^ ll THE SCALPEL, THE SWORD When the family first settled in Toronto he was only seven but h { in love with the big city. Once, on a shopping tour with his moth stole away and was brought back by a policeman hours later. His fr mother asked him what had happened. He smiled mischievously "i wanted to see what it would be like to be lost. So I went up and told th policeman I was lost. It was fun." During the next few years his curiosity and love of adventure took o bolder proportions. He managed to transform the bucolic pursuit of but terflies into a dangerous sport. Once, outside of Gravenhurst, he led his younger brother, Malcolm, up a steep cliff at the top of which he had spied a butterfly. Halfway up, when the going became rough, he told Malcolm to wait for him. Slipping, clutching rocks, roots, bushes, he pulled himself to the summit as Malcolm cried out in fear and warning. When he came down, the butterfly in his hand, he said breathlessly, "There are two things about catching butterflies, Malcolm. First, there's the catching. Then there's the butterfly itself." Twice, on similar sorties, he fell and broke his leg. At the age of ten, when the family was vacationing on Georgian Bay, he watched his father swim across the bay at Honey Harbor. The next day he tried it himself and was saved from drowning by his father, who came up in a boat just in time. But the following year Norman swam the harbor. His father grew increasingly nervous at his son's disregard for danger but the mother's calmer view prevailed. "He must learn to take chances,™ she said, "so let him do what he wants and learn that way." m His early education was spread over a number of schools and towns, but he finally graduated from the Jesse Ketchum Public School in Toronto and the Owen Sound Collegiate High School. When he was ready for college, the Bethunes moved back to Toronto so that Norman, and Malcolm soon after, would be able to go to the University of Toronto. I New winds were blowing across the oceans to the Dominion. The very year of Norman's birth saw completion of the first railroad linking the vast expanse of Canada. During Norman's childhood. Sir Wilfrid Launer emerged to express in increasingly articulate terms the country's maturing nationhood. The steel and smoke of industry spread across the country, drawing billions of dollars in British and American investments. Great waves of immigration from Europe brought farmers to the empty plains 12 DEATH AND BIRTH i laborers to the factories of the east. Across the Great Lakes of the we , ^ prize wheat of the prairies to the St. Lawrence River, steamers Lawrence the rich harvest poured out to ports all over the ^J^ith industry, immigration, expansion came technique, the spur of wor) increasing involvement in the world scene, the germs of new rn er, 5Qon would disturb the Bethunes and challenge their son. ' e^ the new ideas the young Bethune was absorbing at college was ,_5 theory of evolution. To his parents Darwinism was synonymous h anti-Christ. They were among Ontario's leading followers of the then well-known Chicago evangelist, Dwight Moody, who fought vigorously aeainst the teaching of evolution in the schools of America. When Mrs. Bethune discovered Darwin's Origin of Species among Norman's schoolbooks, she was horrified and took to placing religious tracts between the pages of his scientific books to offset its seeming blasphemy. For a while Norman read the tracts in good humor, then one night he stole into his parents' bedroom while his mother was asleep and slipped a copy of Origin of Species under her pillow. His prank put her forbearance to an impossible test: she burned the book in the kitchen stove. He apologized, but she could discern that it was as the loving son he asked her forgiveness, not as the growing man who was announcing his revolt with typical Puckish humor. Though they lived comfortably, the salary of a Presbyterian minister was hardly adequate to put two sons through a university. Norman, who years before had earned pocket money by delivering newspapers, now went to work to earn his tuition. He paid for his freshman year by working as a waiter in the university restaurant. Then, in the summer, he got a )ob as a fireman on a Great Lakes steamer. Next came a stint as a reporter in v indsor, during which he found stringing words together not only sy but exhilarating. For a year he stayed away from the university, earn- '"g enough money for the next term by teaching school at Edgely, Ontario. "'ng the three R's into his pupils, some of them older than he, netted H'300. On other occasions he taught a Bible class and worked as a ^-el-jack in the woods of northern Ontario. Working there broadened ^_ne and hardened his muscles. He always spoke proudly of his stint THE SCALPEL, THE SWORD as a lumberjack, and for years treasured a photo showing him w" k c "real" lumberjacks, all towering over him, all six feet or more and h ut muscled. '^ kTI He was now twenty-four. He had his mother's small nose, wide jaw and blond coloring, his father's large forehead and green-blue ^ "On my mother's side," he would say, "I'm an evangelist. On father's side I have a compulsion to do, to act." Somewhere along the w he had developed his passion for drawing, painting and sculpture. He harf long, powerful hands which were the source of his greatest conceit. He had also developed a zest for living. The clay that took form in his fingers, the colors that he put on canvas, whatever pleased his eye the ever-wider horizons opening up before him in the textbooks and lecture halls -- all of it was good, youth was good, life was good. And then the First World War burst across his dreams and plans, a? '{ did for all young men who were twenty-four and avid for the future. He had one year left before getting his M.D., but he joined the armed forces the day Canada declared war, the tenth man in Toronto to enlist He left for France as a stretcher-bearer with the ist Canadian Division Field Ambulance. In French-Canada there were mutterings against "their war." In the streets of Quebec City massed crowds were denouncing "les imperialist's' and conscription. But for Bcthune, as for most young men in Ontario there were no doubts, no searchings of conscience. He was carried alons; by the general excitement, and in France there was the thrill of a new land, new people, new siglits, and new experiences. Before long it was no longer la belle France but a charnel house. He went among the wounded, carrying maimed men and hulks no longer men, blood on the earth and blood on his hands, apprenticed to death and comrade to those still wanting to live. Away from the politicians' orator) and the exhortations of all the home-front patriots, his mind absorbed the picture of ruin, mud, futility and carnage. He started drinking heavily. In a letter to a friend3 at home he wrote: "The slaughter has begun "I appall me. I've begun to question whether it is worth it. Attached to w I "Letter to A. F. 14 DEATH AND BIRTH ^^^^ I see little of war's glory, and most of war's waste." And niedical^ ^^ Canadians going down in waves before the enemy then ^f iFn a burst of shrapnel, his left thigh ripped to the bone. It was fire, he e carried from the battlefield, weak from loss of blood, the ^ls tur f the wounded and the ear-splitting percussion of battle re- ^TnTin "is memory to haunt his dreams- naa1 nt the next six months in French and English hospitals, then was invaUaS ^ome- The war was over for him' A few weeks later he re-entered the university to take his degree. At aduation he was offered an interneship in a Toronto army hospital, but cd it down. He had come home from the wars wondering whether something lay behind the slaughter and wreckage; but he only wondered. He had no answers, not even any clearly defined questionings. All he knew was that others were over there, and no matter what it was all about, he felt a distaste for sitting on the sidelines and a need to be among them. He enlisted in the British Navy, serving as lieutenant-surgeon on H.M.S. Pegasus until 1918. Six months before the Armistice he asked for, and was granted, a transfer to the Canadian Flying Corps in France, in which he served as medical officer. , a?" He was in France when Germany surrendered. After the victory celebrations were over, he sat in a Paris bistro with his friends and wondered with them what would happen now. He was twenty-eight; the first gray hairs had begun prematurely to show at his temples; the locusts had eaten the years of his prime. The war had put a period behind Bethune the student; it now put a question mark before Bethune the man. He suddenly felt aged, baffled--with a vague, burgeoning desire for something new. s a youth he had known only Canada; as a man he knew only Europe. e had been dispossessed, it occurred to him. There was nothing to reurn to, nowhere to go; only lost time to be made up. He was part of the "enchantment with which Western novelists were to feed the Western r tor the next quarter century. . . . He grew a mustache and had "lmself demobilized in England. i5 THE SCALPEL, THE SWORD DEATH AND BIRTH human body, he was also fascinated by its members y place looked like a bloody butcher shop," he later 4 I , "hntcher shop" he held court, surrounded by a coterie of young lat ' writers, artists, musicians who gathered nightly to be fascinated the innocent abroad," he said of himself, later, when remembering A a rn1' 1k and by his freely dispensed liquor. In the backwash of the postwar London years. \ , controversies of the peace, the fears, complacencies and disillu- he controversies of the peace, me icars, compiacciit-ics anu uismu- \va ' ts of a dislocated world, he defined his philosophy of life to As he regaled his acquaintances with his glib views, men elsewhere searching for answers to their vast uncertainty much less glibly. He had arrived in London with nothing but his air force pay soo he was living lavishly. "I had no money," he explained, "but love for arr I soon found, to my great amusement, that many people with a lot o( money knew nothing about art. I put my critical faculties to work." - .-. » - - -.-- were 5c«n>-m"6 "- _--..--- ., ^ ., He put them to work by combing studios, dealers' stores and dusty Along with fads, religious cults, jazz, unpunctuated poetry, the names warehouses in France and Spain for things to sell in London at a handsome profit. On his first trip he had a total capital of a hundred pounds, all borrowed from friends. He returned with booty and objets d'art which he sold to London art dealers at a net profit of 200 pounds. Whenever the treasury became low, he crossed the Channel. For two years he earned enough money this way to buy the best clothes, the best food, the best liquor, enormous quantities of books, to lend money to anyone who asked for it, and to keep himself supplied with clay, paints and canvas. of new prophets had found their way into public consciousness. Some dreamed wistfully of Wilson's Fourteen Points as guides to the new world' some of Fabian socialism; some enthroned the unconscious in the name of Sigmund Freud; some acted under the banner of Karl Marx. George Bernard Shaw was at the height of his popularity, but his plays and his Fabian views managed to escape Bethune's notice. It was no easy feat in the London of the early twenties, but Bethune accomplished it, much to his embarrassment later when he became a Shawdolator. Bethune had his own prophet, almost obscure by then but once a potent literary influence in England. He had been spiritual father to Oscar Wilde. His name was Walter Pater: professor, author, critic, prophet of the senses, tastes, pleasures; intellectual hero to many a student in the England of Victoria. He was made to order for Bethune, who now invoked His fellow internes at the Hospital for Sick Children and later at the Fever Hospital, unaware of his "business trips," put him down as the heir of some wealthy Canadian rancher. He did not try to disabuse then of the illusion because it amused him to think of the simplicity of hil home while they imagined he had always been used to a life of opulence. ___ ^ ^^^ ^ ^.v^ ^^ ^^^^, ...^ ^., ^,^,v^ Only the son of a millionaire could show such disdain tor money. He was the famous Pater dictum with a vengeance: "Not the fruit of experience, making up for all the long years when he had had to save every penny but experience itself is the end. ... To burn always with a hard, gemlike earned to pay his way through college. arne' to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life." He walked the streets, swinging a cane, his mustache and gray temples I" the London of the early twenties, Bethune worked hard for "success" making him look older than he was, his figure trim in impeccably tailored 3s denned by Walter Pater. clothes. He was an impressive sight as he went to and from the Soho flat .. was tlm^ for the hospital and time for study and time for allhe shared with an Australian doctor he had met in France. Here, in the ght binges as the young doctor wallowed in the uninhibited atmosphere heart of Soho, they tried to "out-Bohemia Bohemia." | ^ Postwar London. The idea was to experience everything. The war had His flat was littered with strange sculpture -- plaster hearts, kidneys- ^ t him that life was cheap and death came fast and there was little brains, coiled intestines, bones, legs, hands and fingers. Along with the e or man to taste everything that life offered. 16 hj 17 I :** .As THE SCALPEL, THE S In the meantime his mother wrote him regula her the Bible, to go to church and to avoid the r: dutifully, giving her accounts of his progress a; For three years he busied himself with his si meeting new people, interpreting Pater, and a he would become a great surgeon. It was o and waiting. At the end of three years he finish< a position with a private clinic in London's East "Ah, the fates, the fates," he wrote of this p the form of two women." The first was Dr. Eleanor Dell,1 wife of a ist, wealthy in her own right, and head of the Bethune worked. Dr. Dell became his friend, factor. Under her prodding and guidance, he for his exams to become a Fellow of the Roy; study, a young doctor needed money, more r taking trips to France and Spain. Dr. Dell prc Bethune listed the amounts, to be repaid in fi to pursue his studies for two more years in ] himself in London with her help. In the autumn of 1923 he went to Edinb exams. There he met the second woman, Fra was love at first sound," he was fond of repea soft, musical Edinburgh cadence. Her voice, 1 able innocence, a remarkable unworldliness, gence," all combined to sweep him off his fee turn, swept her off her feet, and they were months after his exams. She was 22 at the time, the only daughter family, an upper-class product of the best fir and Europe. The day after their marriage he announced he had better prepare to set up in private pra< 1 This is a pseudonym. 18 WORD Bl DEATH AND BIRTH B ik, - riy, urging him to remern. ^.p^ioned to her that he planned to study in Europe. Why, she inquired, littfalls of sin. He answered , a he abandoned the plan? The answer seemed simple. He was now a 5 am interne. carried man, ready to assume the responsibilities of a husband. He would irg?ery, painting, sculpture, igyg to postpone some of his plans. But Frances couldn't understand why. cc i-iuiiuLui, Vienna aim ocruii; muse wiiu iiiusi. Why Detroit? Bethune had the answers. ... ™ - his servicp>; wp,-» ..k l u i a. -i r l ' , i. ,,itv R "vices were those who could least afford to pay for them. The city just across the Canadian border was bursting with activ", oy a stroke of Inrl- k n j l l j ' ' , . , . , " ,. -ntd oolr i k he was called in by the corner grocer one day to It was already the capital of the automotive industry, a sprawling ceni ""k at his v/ife The l j i i 11 i j i. 7 r , r i i n- oo Krurp , he ^man had a repulsively swollen leg, and the of America's mass production industries, a magnet for those seeking "f e, "<-er explained franrirall, A » ^ i.. j a / a u a u r H^U ^ted. R l "antically that a doctor had declared it had to be ampu- _^__"sed the affected area, kept draining the pus under close " Letter to Frances. THE SCALPEL, THE SWORD was a week of mutual tenderness, but it exploded in the conflict of frustrations and antagonisms. Again, in Italy, while looking at Giotto's "Life of St. Francis," he perienced something he described as akin to a revelation and decid il he wanted to become a monk. The mood left him in Vienna, where h» studied under some of the leading surgeons. Then he was sure he could be nothing but a surgeon. | A few weeks later he felt the need for action and excitement, and ttiei necessitated a three weeks' rest in bed. They were the quietest three week' spent in Europe. He drank hard, studied hard, lived hard, and within a year helped Frances go through most of her inheritance. The year wasn't wasted, since he had observed the work of the great European surgeons in Paris, Vienna and Berlin, but he always hated to remember it. "I was like some butterfly batting its crazy wings again! a light, blinded and stupid, going around in circles, with no purpose ii life and no purpose in death." 2 The honeymoon was a mockery. His marriage was a mockery. His life was a mockery. So it seemed to him when they came to the end of t' madcap cavortings about Europe. DEATH AND BIRTH new Mecca for those filled with the prophecies of Henry portuni y' ^^ ^^ ^^ ^ great torrent of its riches washed through ^ . America was on the road to prosperity never dreamed of before ^)c[r01 ' r was the promise of the limitless future. In Detroit there was an ..i, mish endeavor. There, he told himself, he would have to mnnCV W01", ^/w , ne's hand, bend the knee to no Britrh upper-class dowager. It isI > the man-made frontier of America's glittering future. "Detroit," he 'j ..^ Jfere we shall open our first office." ' -' . i . r - _ t-^ _ -- _l i jt t».T -r* -1 cnted a flat at the corner of Cass and Seldon Streets, with exactly twentyfour dollars between them, old pewter and odd antiques picked up in Europe, assorted art objects and Louis Quatorze chairs. For Frances, Detroit was dreary, dirty, mawkish and disturbing. For Bethune it was the twentieth century, a machine-age citadel where opportunity knocked on every door. Ki> a'"',... He hung out his grandfather's shingle, and waited for- opportunity to knock. He waited a year and only the faintest tappings came. ^ Bethune had selected the corner of Cass and Seldon Streets because it had seemed to be a busy section of the city. It soon turned out to be even busier than he had imagined. It was then the center of the red-light district, and when he had borrowed a desk, bought a mattress and opened for business, he found him- ^It a fledgling Hippocrates administering to the age-old Magdalen. In e rest °^ the city industry and commerce grew by leaps and bounds; around Cass and Seldon Streets, prostitution flourished with the times. at.ents began slowly to trickle into his office, but it was mainly the pros- ^tes who were able to pay. ^ > are office Bethune learned a lesson seldom mentioned in his r'rltfnl _ medical courses at Toronto, London, Vienna and Berlin: those who most 21 THE SCALPEL, THE SWORD supervision, and in a matter of days had the patient out of danger Ti grocer's cash register was as empty of money as his heart was full of p tude. "The only way I can pay you. Doctor," he said humbly, "is in (, j For what you did you can have all the groceries you want, free of chare as long as you want." That settled most of the problem of food. The res of the problem was settlec by a butcher across the street with a fortuna fondness for children. . J He came to Bethune's office, tapping the sawdust from his shoes on th stairs, and said hesitantly, "I gotta houseful a kids. You look after the kid an' I give ya all the meat ya kin eat." _ "At least," Bethune told Frances, "we shall now have a balanced diet.*™ When the owner of a hardware and furniture store brought his ailin! wife to join the parade, the circle was complete. They got a bed to pu under the mattress, pots and pans for the kitchen and Grand Rapid furniture to put in incongruous intimacy with the Louis Quatorze chain -; ' "I He gave it a little time--and more time--and still his fortunes re. mained at the level of his patients. Gradually more people came to hi office, but the poverty of the many yielded him little more income than thi poverty of the few. Some of his patients became a source of irritation They would come to his office, or send someone to take him to their homa and they would be dangerously ill with ailments that could easily havi been handled in the initial stages. Either it was a pain that was left u| tended till it was a ruptured appendix, or an unheeded discomfort thi was already advanced venereal disease, or a hernia now strangulating,» a hundred and one other illnesses complicated by neglect. "Why do you wait so long before calling in a doctor?" he would ragf And the patient, a Slav, or a Hungarian, or a native-born auto work" would be incoherent with the embarrassment of his poverty. The shabby flats, the unpaid bills, the senseless, all-pervading sicknes in the boom city of fat America began to depress Bethune. "This is" medicine," he would say to Frances. "It's like putting a mustard pla^ on a wooden leg. When they need treatment they either don't know or are afraid they can't pay for it. When they finally do come, it's o0 too late, or their health has become completely undermined. And w ' 11 DEATH AND BIRTH m prostitute, when her problem is not really that she is dis- can hat she is a prostitute?" He passed the blame on to the world, ca h moments told himself that it was not really his concern, that a a a tnr that the world was what it was, that he could only mend * .i-is 3 QOCLUl ; h n it was broken, repair hernias, viscera, internals, and send 3 ." to the hospital when she was caught in the net of her "occupational hazards." a rhc months dragged by a new fear cut into the unrelieved drabness C h's life and work. He found himself tiring more easily and needing I g sleep. He worried lest he should be losing the drive and energy which had never failed him before. And with increasing fatigue came more doubts, more moodiness, more bitterness. Then he would be called out on a case. He would find a patient dying and would pit himself doggedly against the unknown menace that stole the fruits of the body and mind. He immersed himself in cause and cure and won the patient back to health. He would feel triumph and accomplishment flowing through him again, reviving him, re-establishing the old hopes and pride. His knowledge and skill would become a warm glow inside him, with no room for moodiness or doubt. Once again he was the confident surgeon, certaip of the future, biding his time and undismayed by poverty. |f K; . And suddenly, overnight, before he had time to realize what was happening, he went from failure to success -- and money. He had managed to get himself attached to one of the city hospitals, per orrning routine surgery. He was coming out of the operating theater ne ay when a well-dressed, pleasant-mannered individual stopped him h^a1 d' corridor' ^^"cing himself as Dr. Grant Martin.1 Bethune had .„ ° "lm as ""e of Detroit's most successful practitioners. gest "h e your work'" Dr- Martin told him, "and I would like to sugcould sen(^ m^ ^S^V cases to you- Perhaps you and your wife "Tk me U1ts to the nouse iome evening and we could discuss it further." ""t would be fine." ... . ;r . ..,„. . ^Pseudonym. , ,-. .A,' 23 THE SCALPEL, THE SWORD DEATH AND BIRTH They shook hands. "I think we'll make a good combination Martin said cordially. A brief conversation -- and everything was changed. ^^^lf ride the success that swelled his earnings daily. But life in^_ let hi"1 ^ reality of suffering men and women who needed his ^but^ouldn't pay for it. ^^^n nieht he was awakened by a banging at the door. A man a^^H ,. m ^e darkness. He let loose a torrent of words. Bethune fil At Martin's home Bethune and Frances met other eminent doctors socialites. To the office at Cass and Seldon there now began to come m» and women of wealth and social position. Other doctors followed Martii lead and turned their patients over to the surgeon everybody was sudden talking about. Sped on its way by Martin, the word spread that Bethui was "the man to see." m B j „ in the darkness. He let loose a torrent of words. Bethune finally ed to learn that the stranger's wife was in labor and could find j „;. ^yho would perform the delivery. He soon found out why. The lived with his wife and two children in an abandoned boxcar on the outskirts of the city. By the light of a kerosene lamp, with the husband assisting and two children huddling on a mattress in the corner, he delivered an undersized, wrinkled baby. He washed it, wrapped it in some torn blankets the father handed him, and put it beside the mother, for there was no crib. As he washed up in a basin of water filled from a barrel outside, the father came up nervously, holding a dollar bill in his hand. Bethune took the bill, folded it, and put it back into the man's shirt pocket. In the morning he returned with a basket of food, diapers for the baby and a nightgown for the mother. He prepared a diet for the undernourished mother and examined the baby. When he left he cut short the father's nervous thanks gruffly. He knew the mother could recover, but the baby would probably be dead within the month. This they called medicine--the hallowed art of healing! A job at twenty dollars a week, he complained to Frances, would have done more for the husband than all the wonders that could now be performed on his doomed child. Medicine? The fakers even refused to interrupt their comfortable slumbers to deliver a boxcar child! '^ "e became outspoken about some of his colleagues. While Frances would