Dr. Bethel Harris Fleming: The Fabulous Flemings of Kathmandu
Bethel Harris ‘24 earned a medical degree from the Woman’s Medical College in Philadelphia. 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.
“Dr. Bob’s glimpse of the terrible need for modern medicine in the Tensen area naturally made the Flemings eager to help. But when they wrote to the Nepalese government for permission to start a medical clinic in Tensen, their letter was not answered. The Nepalese hesitate to say “No,” especially on paper, so the Flemings were neither accepted nor refused. A suspicion of outsiders that has gone on for several thousand years in not easily overcome, especially when the foreigners are missionaries of a different religion from Hindu-Buddhist Nepal. Yet nine million people with so few doctors with recognized medical degrees, with tuberculosis or malaria afflicting thousands, had urgent reason for wanting the best that modern medicine had to offer.” - Grace Nies Fletcher, The Fabulous Flemings of Kathmandu
“In 1956 Shanta Bhawan Hospital run by Dr. Bethel and Dr. Bob pioneered the first modern operating room, the first X-ray machine, a modern laboratory routine, and the first blood transfusions and intravenous feeding.”
“Starting only a few years ago with nothing but a small black bag of Dr. Bethel’s own surgical instruments, limited medicines, and a pocket of faith, this mission now operates four large city hospitals as well as numerous clinics in cities and in mountain villages scattered all over the country. Some of these clinics are so far from any road that patients have to be carried in litters by their families over steep mountain paths for two weeks to reach the doctor. The medical staff started by Dr. Bethel and Dr. Bob, now numbers over ninety doctors, trained nurses, and technicians coming from twelve different countries. A training school for Nepalese nurses has already graduated three classes and grows each year.
“Dr. Bob and Dr. Bethel Fleming not only belong to that strange new breed of Christian missionaries, the Silent Samaritans who live their religion daily in the wards and clinics of Shanta Bhawan instead of talking about it; they also respect a culture other than their own. They render onto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s. The Nepalese form of religious freedom is to live and let live; you may worship any god you choose as long as you do not interfere with another’s beliefs. Everyone in Kathmandu knows that Shanta Bhawan serves the sick and wounded in the name of Jesus Christ. The Flemings consider themselves as guests on Nepal and, as such, respect and obey the law of the land.”