Norman Bethune Tapestry
About the Tapestry
This tapestry shows Canadian surgeon, Dr. Norman Bethune, operating in a little Buddist temple. He was assisting the 8th Route Army in 1938. The 8ft by 6ft (2.4m x 1.8m) tapestry was made in the People’s Republic of China in 1975 from a coloured photograph depicts Bethune bent over the wedged open chest of a soldier as he does a rib resection to get at the lung damaged by a bullet. This tapestry was featured on the cover of JAMA in 1979.
History of the Norman Bethune Tapestry
with remarks provided by William C. Gibson, MD, DPhil
“One day when I had just arrived back in Vancouver from World Health Organization meetings in Geneva I dropped in to see H.R. MacMillan at his home. As usual he began: ‘What is the best thing you saw while away?’ I told him of a very fine tapestry which was in a travelling exhibition, showing Norman Bethune in the Chinese countryside. ‘Find it,’ he said.
The setting depicts a former Buddhist temple, which Bethune had converted to his operating room for the Eighth Route Army in Hopei Province in the north.
After months of correspondence with Chinese and Geneva sources, I had to report failure. So H.R. said: ‘Get one made in China and send me the bill.’ So I sent off to Shanghai a colour photo to be reproduced, giving the approximate size which we could accommodate.
Six months later the Bethune tapestry arrived, almost buried in mothballs! We placed it in the Sherrington Room, where many came to study it.”
Dr. Norman Bethune was a Canadian thoracic surgeon who advocated for a socialized health care system in Canada. He had been a stretcher-bearer and later a lieutenant-surgeon in the First World War, and was once again involved in military medicine during the Spanish Civil War. His mobile blood transfusion unit, one of the first and the largest at the time, saved many lives in Spain. He returned to Canada to fundraise for his continued work in Spain, traveling across the country. One of the places he spoke at was Salmon Arm, B.C., where he told attendees he no longer planned to return to Spain, but to China, due to the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War.
Bethune traveled with Jane Ewan, a Canadian nurse on a CPR Empress Liner from Vancouver to China. He brought his transfusion service and trained residents in rural areas to be doctors and nurses. Gibson describes Bethune’s time in China: “In 18 months Bethune became a legend. After his death at age 49 of an infected finger, cut while operating, Mao Zedong wrote an eulogy which was memorized by every schoolchild in China. When I first visited China in 1973, with the Bethune Foundation, every stop we made was highlighted by children reciting it.”
The William C. Gibson fonds can be found at UBC Archives.
References:
Bethune, N. (n.d.). Dr. Norman Bethune. Retrieved from Parks Canada: https://www.canada.ca/en/parks-canada/news/2018/06/dr-norman-bethune-1890-1939.html
Hannant, L. (1998). The politics of passion: Norman Bethune’s writing and art. University of Toronto Press. https://resolve.library.ubc.ca/cgi-bin/catsearch?bid=2156783
Deslauriers, J. & Goulet, D. (2015). The medical life of Henry Norman Bethune. Canadian Respiratory Journal. 22(6), 32-42. https://go.exlibris.link/f7bjxjWV
