Henry Norman Bethune was born on March 3, 1890 in the booming Ontario lumber town of Gravenhurst on the shore of Lake Muskoka, more than a hundred miles north of Toronto (Stewart, The Canadians: Norman Bethune 3). He was a strong, daring boy. One day when he was about seven, slipping away from his mother, Bethune set off through the big city. Hours later, he asked a policeman to be taken home. Bethune said to his mother, ¡°I wanted to see what it would be like to be lost. So I went up and told the policeman I was lost. It was fun¡± (Allan 12).
             Norman graduated with honors from Owen Sound Collegiate in June 1907, and instead of following some of his classmates to university, he spent the following year working as lumberjack north of Lake Superior (Stewart, The Canadian: Norman Bethune 4).
             While in Edinburgh, he met Frances Penny, a young Scottish woman. They fell in love and were married in August 1923. Frances traveled with Bethune as he studied medicine in Vienna, Paris, and Berlin before moving to Detroit to set up the medical practice. Unfortunately their two personalities clashed soon after the marriage (Stewart, The mind of Norman Bethune 7).
             After Bethune finished his studies in Europe, in 1924, ¡­Bethune set up his first medical practice in a semi-residential district, close to the downtown area (Stewart, The Canadians: Norman Bethune 11). In Detroit, the inequalities he saw in the American medical system troubled Bethune. His outspoken criticisms were poorly received. (http://www.citzine.ca/steng.e)
             His hospital work brought him contacts and rich, paying clients, but he still went out in the middle of the night to see those who could not pay. (Wilson 47) When Bethune began to tire easily, he had a physical examination and the results showed that he had contacted tuberculosis in both lungs (Stewart, The mind of Norman Bethune 10).
             When Bethune became sick and was diagnosed with tuberculosis, he left De...