THE SCALPEL, THE SWORD: THE STORY OF DR. NORMAN BETHUNE Ted Allan Toronto, McClelland & Stewart, 1989. 320pp, paper, $14.95 ISBN 0-7710-0729-9. CIP Re-Issue. Grades 10 and up/Ages 15 and up Reviewed by Elinor Kelly. Volume 18 Number 3 1990 May First published in 1952, The Scalpel, The Swordis being re-issued in time for the arrival of the controversial and long awaited film Bethune: The Making of a Hero with Donald Sutherland in the title role. This book is the standard biography of Norman Bethune, written by two men who knew him in Montreal and in Spain and who agreed with his politics. It has been fifty years since Doctor Bethune died, but his name is still revered in Spain and in China, if not in his native country. Canadians have clear eyes for heroes' feet of clay. His life told here has tragic proportions - a writer, artist and surgeon adored by nurses and families who knew his total devotion to his patients; a doctor who got tuberculosis, became a pioneer in thoracic surgery, and was horrified by the condition of the poor during the Depression; a gifted person with an abrasive personality, a caustic tongue, impatient, hopeless at personal relationships, and naive about the realities of politics; a man who risked his life for causes he believed in, pioneering portable blood transfusion equipment in Spain, operating day and night on Chinese battlefields, and in the end dying from an infection when the rubber gloves ran out. This well-known book should be available in all libraries. Elinor Kelly, Port Hope, Ont.