From November 1938 to February 1939, he led the medical team to the front lines of Yanbei and Jizhong in Shanxi for battlefield treatment. In 4 months, he traveled 750 kilometers and performed more than 300 surgeries. There are 13 rooms and dressing stations to treat a large number of wounded.
On January 8, 1938, the Canadian-American medical team sailed from Vancouver to China carrying a batch of medicines and surgical equipment. Before boarding the ship, Bethune wrote a farewell letter to his ex-wife Frances. Arriving in Hong Kong on January 20, 1938, Liao Chengzhi, the head of the Eighth Route Army Office in Hong Kong, who received the notice from the Communist Party of China Bureau of the United States, arranged for the Canadian and American medical teams to fly to Wuhan.
While waiting to go north in Wuhan, Bethune and Ivan went to Hanyang Christian Presbyterian Hospital (today’s Wuhan Fifth Hospital) to help with work; doctor Parsons decided to stay in Wuhan’s Kuomintang-controlled area, and Bethune clearly refused to work under Chiang Kai-shek He worked in the areas under the jurisdiction of the National Government under his leadership and instead helped the Communist Party of China.
After arrangements by Zhou Enlai, deputy director of the Political Department of the Military Commission in Wuhan, on February 22, 1938, Bethune, Ivan and Christian missionary Dr. Chad Brown left in dozens of large trucks carrying medical supplies. From Wuhan, we crossed the Yellow River through war-torn Henan and Tongguan in Shaanxi to Fenglingdu and Yuncheng in Shanxi to the Eighth Route Army headquarters near Linfen.
At this time, the Japanese army attacked southward along the Tongpu Railway. Bethune and his party diverted via Tongguan and arrived in Xi'an on March 20. Under the arrangement of Lin Boqu, the head of the Eighth Route Army Office in Xi'an, they finally arrived in 1938. Arriving in Yan'an on March 31, 2018.
When meeting with Mao Zedong on April 1, Bethune said that the medical equipment he brought from North America would be enough to form a field medical team to rescue the seriously wounded near the front line; Mao Zedong told Bethune that the wounded should be operated on immediately He is very happy to have a recovery rate of 75 and expresses his strong support for his work. On May 2, 1938, Bethune led a group of medical staff to leave Yan'an for the Shanxi-Chahar-Hebei Border Region and became a field doctor.
Jane Yiwen stayed in the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia-Shanxi-Suiyuan Border Region, and then went to work at the New Fourth Army Headquarters in southern Anhui for half a year in early 1939. In 1981, she published a memoir in Canada, detailing the entire process of going to China with Bethune. Mao Zedong called Nie Rongzhen, commander and political commissar of the Shanxi-Chahar-Hebei Military Region: "I agree to appoint Bethune as the health adviser to the military region and have full confidence in his opinions and abilities."
Bethune worked with carpenters and blacksmiths in Shanxi-Chahar-Hebei Province to manufacture surgical instruments. He also helped to establish training for doctors, nurses and hospital orderlies. He repeatedly wrote to Nie Rongzhen to establish a military health school to train a large number of medical staff. He also designed packaging boxes to be used as operating tables and horseback medicine boxes. He once set a record of operating on 115 wounded soldiers in 69 hours during the Jizhong-Qihui Battle.
He corresponded with Mao Zedong during his time in China. During the year, nine months and seventeen days that Bethune was in China, he wrote many letters and articles to institutions and friends in the United States and Canada, publicizing China's anti-war situation to the international community, and calling on the international community to provide funds, materials and personnel for China's anti-war. assistance.
Bethune was originally scheduled to leave for North America on October 20, 1939, to raise funds for the establishment of the Eighth Route Army Rear Hospital and the Shanxi-Chahar-Hebei Military Region Health School. At this time, the Japanese army launched a winter sweep of Shanxi-Chahar-Hebei. Bethune chose to stay and participate in the medical treatment of the anti-mopping operations.
On October 29, 1939, during the Motianling battle in Laiyuan County, he performed an operation on a wounded man whose leg was seriously injured. When the Japanese army approached the operating room, in order to speed up the operation process, Bethune put his left hand into the wound and dug out the wound. The bone fragments were removed, and a piece of bone pierced Bethune's middle finger. Three days later, on November 1, Bethune operated on a wounded man with erysipelas and cellulitis in his neck, and the open wound on his finger became infected.
Died of sepsis on November 12 at the home of farmer Di Junxing in Huangshikou Village, Tang County, Hebei Province.
Extended information:
Achievements and contributions
In 1924, Bethune suffered from tuberculosis, but still worked hard and invented the "artificial pneumothorax therapy" and used it in his own The experiment on the body was a great success. His original thoracic surgery skills are well-known in the medical community.
In the summer of 1931, Bethune signed a franchise patent agreement with Pilling & Sons of Philadelphia, USA. The latter was solely responsible for the manufacture and sale of surgical instruments invented by Bethune and named after "Bethune Instruments" - this There are as many as 22 types of similar devices, and these devices were in an extremely leading position at the time.
From 1936 to 1937, Bethune went to Spain to join the Spanish Civil War as a volunteer supporting international anti-fascism. During this period, he created a mobile casualty first aid system, which became the prototype of the mobile military surgical hospital that was widely used in the future. In order to transfuse blood to rescue the wounded who had lost excessive blood, he invented the world's first method of transporting blood, which was of extremely important medical significance.
In 1937, when China's Anti-Japanese War broke out, Bethune led a medical team composed of Canadians and Americans to the Liberated Areas of China. In April 1938, he was transferred to the Shanxi-Chahar-Hebei Border Region through Yan'an and worked there. In the past two years, his spirit of sacrifice, enthusiasm for work, and sense of responsibility were all exemplary, until he died in the line of duty. His deeds have been widely praised by the Chinese people.
Reference: Baidu Encyclopedia-Bethune