Review: Bethune

Bethune by Roderick Stewart
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I was attracted to this biography too find out more about the Canadian doctor and innovator that had a Detroit office on Selden early in his career. Part rootless roué, he invented the Bethune rub shears still in use today and was reckless in trying to advance surgical methods to fight the tuberculosis he himself suffered from. Some patients he thus saved; some died under his knife. As a budding socialist he was caught up in the proto-Communistic anti-fascist fervor of the early 1930s ending up in Madrid supporting the fight against Franco. There he developed frontline battlefield medicine techniques like mobile operating stations and blood services further developed by many services in WWII. This part of his career found him with Chinese defending against the Japanese invaders where his tireless and selfless activities led to his own death.

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