A true man of action, Dr. Norman Bethune was best known for his contribution to the medical field during the Spanish Civil war and Sino-Japanese war. In Canada, he gained respect for being a gifted surgeon and political activist. Despite the criticism he received, he was a hero in the eyes of many people. As a physician and medical innovator, Norman Bethune showed the qualities of a true Canadian hero because he was selfless, devoted and innovative.
Dr. Norman Bethune had invented many surgical tools, medicine and his famous mobile unit. While training at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal, the first mobile blood transfusion unit was invented. At first, his practice of his mobile unit was only available when the soldiers had been brought to the hospital from the front lines during the Spanish Civil War. After a great quantity of research, Bethune discovered that he could utilize his mobile unit on the war site. Moreover, Norman Bethune would bring blood, which was donated, onto the battlefields, and use his mobile unit on the injured soldiers. While Bethune was in China he organized a medical corps and trained the staff along with making more mobile units in his spare time. The manuals illustrated and written by Bethune were translated and mimeographed for distribution. Norman Bethune also managed to put together another mobile transfusion, which was similar to the one he used during the Spanish Civil War. In addition to operating surgery, Bethune had written a numerous amount of articles for medical journals. In these articles he introduced new surgical techniques along with improvements based on his research.
Finally, Bethune came to the realization that in guerrilla-war zone of China, all medical assistance had to be mo...
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...ng blood to the wounded soldiers.
In 1938, Norman Bethune left Spain to go to China since there weren’t enough trained doctors to control the wounded soldiers. He individually trained people in first aid, sanitary practices and simple surgical procedures. While doing surgery on a wounded soldier in 1939, Norman Bethune accidentally cut his hand, which led to an infection. Unfortunately, this led to the death of a selfless Canadian hero.
As an innovative, devoted and selfless Canadian hero’s life came to an end, he managed to make an exceptionally impressive impression. From improving medical care to mechanizing medicine, Norman Bethune has committed his entire lifetime to making a change in benefiting all of mankind. His utter devotion is a lesson for all to learn, and his selflessness humanitarianism has shown an intense influence to people throughout the world.
Lieutenant-General Sir Arthur Currie was the most capable soldier that Canada has produced. Certainly, he did not look like the great soldier he had become. A very tall man, at six-foot-four, he was also somewhat overweight. Through his successes as the Commander of the Canadian Corps, he knew how to delegate authority and stand by the decisions of his subordinates.
Here at the Chelsea Naval Hospital, the influx of patients arriving home from the war inflicted with "battle wounds and mustard gas burns," has created a shortage of physicians and it is becoming increasingly difficult to fight this influenza. Even our own physicians are falling ill from the disease and dying within hours of its onset. Today I received a letter from Dr. Roy, a friend and fellow physician at Camp Devens, who describes a similar situation:
Resection was a process that “involved cutting open the limb, sawing out the damaged bone, and then closing the incision” (Jones, 1). Resection allows the patient to keep his limbs but it requires a great ordeal of time and skill. This also contributed to the common practice of amputation during the war. But there were cases where surgeons did use this method. Terry J. Jones said in his NY Times article, “resections were used more frequently after surgeons learned that amputations had a much higher mortality rate” (Jones, 1). In another article by Corydon Ireland, it describes Mitchell Adam’s, a Harvard lecturer, grandfather who served as a volunteer surgeon during the Civil War. In the article, “Adams was not a champion of hasty amputations, but argued for excision and other limb-saving measures. And he describes the everyday pressures of a country practice in Framingham, Mass” (Ireland, 1). This meant that not all surgeons at the time only wanted to amputate but strived for alternate methods. This new knowledge shows that some surgeons were more dedicated to thinking about the well-being of their patients than others and this opens up to other possibilities that may have occurred during the war. This allows an image to come to mind of a surgeon diligently operating on a soldier with care and compassion. However, even though there may be many possibilities, we can’t truly know every event that occurs during a
1. History is the study of human recorded past. ECCO stands for expectations, constraints, choices, and outcomes.
Pre hospital care and clinical practice in civilian life is not a new idea, in fact it is has been around in one form or another for roughly 200 years. Its foundations lie in the military. During the Napoleonic wars with a French surgeon named Dominique-Jean Larrey. (1) Pre hospital care has come a long way from hauling fallen soldiers off the battlefield in a horse drawn carriage (1) to transporting patients in a different kind of carriage, a four wheel drive one to be precise. Pre hospital care and clinical practice owes many of its advancements in the 200 years since it has existed to the military. Their practices or research conducted during military conflicts has influenced civilian pre hospital care and clinical practice in the areas of triage systems, transport systems, clinical management, equipment and education to name but a few, but where it has had the most influence has been on the transport systems and clinical practices used. Their uses in the military pre hospital care world have worked particularly well in the civilian world. As a result of such they have been adapted by civilian paramedics quite readily.
The EMS system goes back to the Crusades in the 11th century. The Knights of St. John were instructed by Arab and Greek doctors for first-aid treatment. The Knights were the first medical responders of that time, treating both sides of the war. The injured were taken to tents to be treated further. In 1792, the chief physician in Napoleons Army, Baron Dominique-Jean Larrey, designed and created the “flying ambulance”, which was a special type of carriage staffed with a group of medical personnel made to access every part of the battlefield. Then, in 1797, he also instituted the first pre-hospital system designed to triage and transport the wounded in the field to proper aid stations. Larrey’s actions and groundbreaking ideas helped increase the chances for survival among wounded soldiers and ultimately benefitted Napoleon’s conquest efforts.
During the series of World War I, there had been problems but people had immediately found a solution. One out of the many solutions had included the struggle to find an antiseptic that worked, and solutions for transportation of injured soldiers. There had been multiple options for the transportation of the injured soldiers and controversy had struck the injured and medical staff. There had been many cases of death happening to soldiers whether it was by diseases or but initiating combat. During major surgeries, like getting bullets out of a limb or abdomen, there had been a series of blood transfusions and a process for those blood transfusions.
While the stories of the Civil War are often dominated by those of courageous soldiers and their harsh conditions, often the history of those serving the soldiers is forgotten. While medical staff had been prominent in armies for hundreds of years, the American Civil War brought a new era of medical treatment and personnel to the world and future of warfare. Mass amputations and an almost organized chaos characterized both the Confederate and Union medical staffs. Out of the hundreds of thousands of deaths, more than half were caused by disease, rather than combat injuries. Unsanitary conditions and food with poor nutrients took the lives of many soldiers, with many other soldiers dying before they could reach a treatment center. Many surgeons
The setting up of hospital and emergency service was born because of the war. The emergency hospitals and services were designed to treat wounded and sick soldiers, bombing casualties, and evacuees. This singular action proved that the state can establish and run a health service. Beveridge’s report of 1942 served as a last signal which confirmed that a national health service would be established.
Four years of my life have passed away in a blink! I remember entering freshmen year of
Since during the civil war times the education about medical tools and medicine, the doctors would often use the same tools continuously on many of the wounded soldiers. This would spread the disease more than they already were. Also the soldiers were not so hygienic themselves, neither were the doctors. The soldiers would not shower daily and the doctors would not clean
I interacted with more people than I could count - all the while astounded by how many clinics were needed to give the underprivileged basic medical needs. This required participation in interviews on patient history and diagnostic discussions with supervising physicians. Daily, I saw the eyes of the little boy in young patients; I was reminded that it was possible to make a difference in these other countries. I had another opportunity that I did not with the little boy: I was able to form relationships with many of the terminally ill patients while serving tea and talking in hopes of boosting
From 1940 to 1941, he received his Doctorate in Medical Science from Columbia University for his research and dissertation on blood banking. He became a Medical supervisor for the Blood for Britain project organized by the the Blood Transfusion Betterment Association in New York. He became the assistant director of the first American Red Cross Plasma Bank at the Presbyterian Hospital in New York, as well as the assistant director of Blood Procurement for the National Research Council, so he was in charge of blood used by the U.S. Army and Navy. He became the professor and Head of the Department of Surgery at Howard University, the chief surgeon at Freedmen's Hospital, and was certified as an examiner for the American Board of Surgery. During World War II, his blood transfusions saved thousands of wounded warriors. With all his outstanding awards and achievements, the U.S. armed forces still asked him to resign after his standup on their segregated blood policy. Drew R. Charles was an exceptional leader in his time and created a system to save lives through blood banks. Through his life he was forced to deal with racism but regardless he prevailed and achieved far more than was thought
Social Studies education is a subject in today’s schools that is undervalued. The study of social studies in schools help young people develop the ability to make informed and reasoned decisions as citizens of a culturally diverse, democratic society in an interdependent world (Seefeldt, Castle, & Falconer, 2010). When participating in social studies class children are learning so much about who they are, where they came from, how to succeed in the world, and more. Most of what we teach daily includes an aspect of social studies. But, since the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) of 2001 de-emphasis or nonexistence of elementary social studies is the national focus because of high stakes testing (Sunal, & Sunal, 2008). Social studies
In the summer of 1993, I volunteered in the transportation department at St. Mary's hospital in Tucson, Arizona. This gave me the opportunity to communicate with many patients and observe physicians. I will never forget the faces of those severely ill patients. The importance of medicine and physicians in our society became even more clear and compelling to me.