Reading2 Norman  Bethune

Q1:When did Bethune join the Chinese to struggle against the Japanese invaders?
Q2:Why we call Norman Bethune  is a great doctor?

    Norman Bethune was a great doctor, who was the hero in China. He was born in Gravenhurst, Ontario on March 3, 1890. His father was a Presbyterian minister who had descended from a long line of clergymen, educators, and medical practitioners. His mother had been an evangelical missionary. After Norman Bethune left medical school at the university of Toronto in1914, he enlisted in the Canadian army.

    Then in1919, Norman Bethune began an internship specializing in children’s disease. In 1922, while he was going to Edinburgh, where he earned the FRCS qualification at the Royal College of Surgeons, he fell in love with a strikingly beautiful lady whose name was Frances Denny and they married in 1923. Unfortunately, when he discovered he contracted tuberculosis due to overwork he didn’t want to implicate his wife, so he insisted his divorce him and return to her native Scotland and his wife accepted this idea. As we can see, Norman Bethune was a selfless and thoughtful man.

    Next, in1929 he was the assistant of Dr.Edward Archibald the Canadian pioneer in thoracic surgery at McGill University in Montreal Quebec for 8years. In 1936 as soon as the Spanish Civil War broke out, Bethune accepted an invitation from the committee to Aid Spanish Democracy to head the Canadian Medical Unit in Madrid.

   Most importantly, in January 1938 Bethune joined the Chinese to struggle against the Japanese invaders. Sadly, probably due to his weakened state, Norman Bethune contracted infection and died of his wounds on Novermber12, 1939, China.

    In order to remember Norman Bethune, Mao Zedong who was the Chinese chairman at that time published his essay entitled“In Memory of Norman Bethune”which documented Norman Bethune’s life in China, the nations normal elementary school textbook still has the essay today.