Bethel Harris '24

Bethel Harris ’24 also earned her medical degree from the Woman’s Medical College. She became a medical missionary in India, while her husband Robert Fleming studied birds, collecting 700 species for the Chicago Natural History Museum. While in Nepal in 1949, he alerted Bethel to the lack of medical care for 9 million Nepalese. “You never saw so many desperately sick people, Bethel. They had tuberculosis, leprosy, worms,... The children were heartbreaking.”  After five years of effort, they opened Shanta Bhawan or “Palace of Peace” – the first modern medical facility in Nepal, located in Kathmandu.