Blood transfusions in Spain
Broadcast Date: Nov. 30, 1980
"I have an idea — I think we should organize an ambulant blood transfusion service."Revolutionary words from Dr. Bethune as recalled by his translator, Henning Sorensen. Bethune had gone to Spain to help out with its civil war in October 1936, and while there he embarked on a task that would revolutionize military medicine. In this TV clip, Sorensen recalls the doctor's remarkable accomplishments, as well as his personality. "He was a terribly complex man," says Sorensen.
Despite Bethune's temper and his weakness for women and alcohol, "he was very tender with the wounded, and very concerned," explains Sorensen. "It seemed his whole personality changed when he went in among the wounded."
Blood transfusions in Spain
• The Spanish Civil War began in the summer of 1936. It started as a right-wing nationalist military uprising against the newly elected leftist Popular Front government. The Nationalists attracted fascist Germany and Italy to fight on their side and, later, Russians came to fight on the Popular Front's side.• Spain became a popular cause among many of the leftist artists and writers in the rest of the world. It was looked upon as a battle between fascism and communism.
• The now-communist Bethune decided to go to Spain to help out medically with the civil war. He wrote: "It is in Spain that the real issues of our time are going to be fought out. It is there that democracy will either die or survive."
• Bethune left for Spain in October 1936. When he arrived, he was disturbed by the number of men dying of blood loss in military hospitals. He decided that if they couldn't get the soldiers to the blood supplies fast enough, they needed to bring the blood to the soldiers.
• His mobile blood transfusion system was simple but revolutionary: extract blood from volunteer donors in the cities, store it in refrigerators (with sodium citrate added to prevent clotting), and deliver it to where it's needed — when it's needed — via a specially outfitted vehicle. Inside the vehicle was a small refrigerator run by kerosene, a sterilizing unit, an incubator and all the other instruments necessary for transfusions. "In all, our equipment consists of 1,375 separate pieces," wrote Bethune in December of 1936.
• The mobile unit was called Servicio Canadiense de Transfusion de Sangre (Canadian Blood Transfusion Service). By the spring of 1937, his service was providing up to 100 transfusions per day. Bethune and his team often risked their lives to bring blood to the wounded in Spain.
• Bethune's battlefront blood transfusion system is viewed by medical historians as an important contribution to military medicine. It's considered to be an early precursor to MASH (Mobile Army Surgical Hospital) units — the portable surgical hospitals that were first introduced in 1945 and were widely used in the Korean War (1950-53).
• Bethune worked extremely hard and showed great compassion for his patients in Spain, but he also continued his womanizing, hard-drinking ways. His brash, opinionated nature also frequently got him into trouble with many of the Spanish Communists.
• Bethune's relations with the Spanish Communists got so tense, a Canadian Communist official was sent to Spain to check things out. Bethune was subsequently sent back to Canada in May 1937 to embark on a public speaking tour to raise funds for the Spanish cause.
Blood transfusions in Spain
Medium: Television
Program: CBC Television Special
Broadcast Date: Nov. 30, 1980
Guest(s): Henning Sorensen
Duration: 5:50
Writer: William Whitehead
Last updated:
June 19, 2007
Radio
8:50
A portrait of Bethune, from the doctors and nurses who knew him in Montreal.
Blood transfusions in Spain.
The CBC Digital Archives Website.
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
Last updated: June 19, 2007.
[Page consulted on Feb. 16, 2012.]