Burma Surgeon

I picked up a book at a library sale a couple of weeks ago, Burma Surgeon by Gordon S. Seagrave. It turns out to be one of those little gems that every haunter of used bookstores anticipates and treasures finding.

Gordon S. Seagrave came from a long line of American Baptist Missionaries serving in Burma from the 1830's onwards. He was born in 1897, learning to speak one of the native languages, Karen, before he spoke English. He returned to the US for his higher education, to receive his training as a doctor at Johns Hopkins and to marry his wife, Marion before returning to Burma in the 1920's.

He ended up serving the peoples of the Shan states in northeastern Burma for four decades. Arriving with his pregnant wife, a young son and a full-hearted commitment to his mission there was not much to be found to give him hope or confidence. Starting with virtually nothing, he built a 100 patient hospital, satellite aid stations, and much later, further expanded the hospital and its services. He trained several generations of Burmese nurses, paying particular attention to try and match nurses in training to the languages and cultures of the patients being served, i.e. he needed to train nurses from among the Burmese people, Chinese, Karen, Shan, Kachin, Taungthu, etc.

With the advent of World War II and the Japanese invasion of Siam and Burma, Seagrave had to abandon his hill hospital and formed a nascent MASH unit to serve the Allied forces in eastern Burma (Chinese Army, British and latterly American forces). The fast moving Japanese invasion rapidly cut off these forces, one from another and each other from natural routes of escape into India. Seagrave gathered up a cadre of his people and eventually managed to escape into British India with General Stilwell by hiking through remote trails in the far north west of Burma.

His biography and adventures are captured in the book I found, Burma Surgeon, published in 1943. As one of the first war memoirs, it was an instant hit in the US and Seagrave followed it up with The Burma Surgeon Returns published in 1946, chronicling his return to the Shan states and the resurrection of his hospital from the war ruins into which it had fallen. This second book was equally well received.

This is not in the same league as such WWII classics as Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (still able to seize the imagination of sixth graders and up) or The Great Escape (more for ninth graders and up).

The narrative flow is choppy; switching from history to autobiography, to travelogue to journal. I would pitch this at eleventh graders and up that have a particular interest in Asia or World War II. Burma Surgeon is an interesting text for other reasons. For one thing, the war and battles in Burma get very short shrift in the world history books so it is interesting simply for providing coverage not otherwise available.

Another aspect is the contrast between our modern over-sensitivity to issues of culture and ethnicity compared to the fairly robust approach to these issues in Seagraves' text. He is at no times demeaning or derogatory of any of the ethnic groups but he is perfectly comfortable retailing the common stereotypes of each group as perceived by the other groups in a fashion which would be anathema today.

Finally there is a disconnectedness between the type of man you think Seagrave must be and the way he comes across in his own text. There is some element that makes you feel that there is a thin patina of false modesty over a very healthy self-regard. I don't think, though, that that is the case. Instead, I suspect it reflects the self-confidence and orientation of an individual who is accustomed to being the solution to everyone's problems. Remove an appendix? Done. Clean the latrines? Done. Build by hand a 100 patient hospital? Done. Perform an operation in the dark, in the rain, on the trail, with no surgical instruments? Done.

I suspect that being the final authority on so many things in that near distant time, in that remote location with that degree of isolation would make anyone have a degree of self-confidence and self-reliance not naturally seen otherwise.

His tale also puts to the lie the romance of natural treatments, herbs and medicines. Looking at what he had to deal with and what he was tackling in terms of depth and breadth of diseases, you realize that natural medicine was 90% misdirected tradition and 10% wisdom in botanical resources. It was not capable of alleviating the bulk of what felled or incapacitated the population and that Seagraves' medicines and surgeries, limited and and unrefined as they were, made a world of difference.

A fascinating little glimpse into a world mostly gone through a book largely now forgotten though once well known.