The Legacy of Dorothy Davis Cook Susan E
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The Legacy of Dorothy Davis Cook Susan E. Elliott oo often the lives, contributions, and legacies of mission- Dorothy Fay Davis was born in Hugo, Colorado, on March Tary nurses have been ignored in our mission histories. 29, 1912. Raised in a Christian home, she spent the majority of her Here I wish to highlight the remarkable ministry and service of childhood in Alhambra, California. She graduated from Pasa- Reverend Sister Tutor Dorothy Davis Cook, Church of the dena College (now Point Loma Nazarene University) in 1934. A Nazarene missionary nurse who served in Swaziland from 1940 statement under her senior photo reads, “Pasadena College has to 1972.1 given many talented people to the mission field. This year we are Modern nursing began with a call from God. According to proud to have one who has consecrated her life to this cause.”4 Florence Nightingale’s own testimony, “On February 7, 1837, Following her Pasadena years, Davis continued her educa- God spoke to me and called me to His service.”2 A similar tion at the Nazarene Samaritan Hospital in Nampa, Idaho. experience awaited the woman who would become known as the Established in 1920 and since closed in 1951, Samaritan Hospital Mother of Swazi Nurses. On a Sunday afternoon in September opened for the purpose of preparing nurses for medical mis- 1928, sixteen-year-old Dorothy Davis heard the voice of God sions. Davis graduated from Samaritan in 1938 and then com- calling her to Africa. The key verse that day was Psalm 2:8—”Ask pleted her bachelor of science degree at Northwest Nazarene of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and College, also in Nampa. She was appointed to Nazarene mission- the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession.” Nightingale ary service on November 22, 1939.5 did not know that in being obedient to God, she would change the health and well-being of the world. Dorothy did not know Swaziland that day that her inheritance, her children, would be the Swazi women she raised and trained to be Christian nurses.3 After six weeks at sea crossing the Atlantic, which was then a World War II battlefield, Davis arrived in Africa on June 4, 1940. Susan E. Elliott is a certified Family and Women’s Health Nurse Practitioner Her first year of service was in the north of Swaziland. The village and Assistant Professor of Nursing at California State University, Los Angeles. of Endzingini (sometimes spelled Indzingini) is where Harmon Through the Church of the Nazarene, she has provided health care in Swaziland, Schmelzenbach had first opened the African missionary pro- Zambia, Kenya, Russia, Venezuela, Panama, El Salvador, Guatemala, and the gram of the Church of the Nazarene and where missionary nurse Dominican Republic. Lillian Cole built the first Nazarene hospital. In addition to seeing 32 INTERNATIONAL BULLETIN OF MISSIONARY RESEARCH, Vol. 28, No. 1 clinic patients and caring for orphans, Davis began learning the seemed keen to learn so that wasn’t the problem. Lack of equip- Zulu language—and the importance of prayer in a missionary’s ment would be a great problem. My first classroom was next to life.6 the morgue. When someone died in the hospital during the night, The Swazi had migrated to this region over 300 years earlier. we couldn’t have class in that little shack. It was just really a shack The Kingdom of Swaziland is a small country (6,704 square with a partition between us, nothing over the top. So every miles), with the borders determined by the British and Dutch morning I never knew where I was going to teach. Sometimes we colonialists, the Zulu War, and the Boer War. King Sobhuza II taught outside under the trees and sometimes we taught in the was Ngwenyama (the Lion) of Swaziland from 1921 to 1982, wards.”12 keeping the nation and culture of the Swazi alive. Upon the Davis remembered fondly one humorous teaching moment. request of the king, the Nazarene hospital had been moved from It was not the Swazi custom to wash one’s hair. Almost immedi- Endzingini to the city of Bremersdorp (now Manzini), which was ately after patients accepted Jesus Christ as Savior, however, they more centrally located in the country. There the missionaries commonly wanted to have their hair washed. Once, upon the recognized the value of training nationals to care for their own. conversion of a female patient, Davis decided to use the moment The first Swazi trainee was pulled from the hospital garden to be as an opportunity to teach bedside bathing and hair washing. As an extra pair of hands in surgery. She did so well that a nurse’s she proceeded to wash the woman’s beehive hair, Davis discov- aide program was initiated. Missionary nurse Jennie Evelyn Fox ered a cache of pills—the woman had hidden all the pills she had expanded the program to four years and added basic midwifery.7 been given to take in her mass of dirty hair! Even though she had Davis felt the call to teach nursing and so was transferred to not taken any of the prescribed medications, the woman had the Raleigh Fitkin Memorial Hospital and Nazarene Nursing been improving daily.13 School in Bremersdorp to serve as a “sister” (i.e., registered To aid her teaching endeavors, Davis wrote four nursing nurse) and later take leadership of the Swazi nursing program. texts, which became the gold standard for Swaziland and sur- The king was very supportive of Davis’s service to his people. rounding countries. As the professionalism of nursing in However, Swaziland was also a member, though unwillingly, of Swaziland grew under Davis’s direction, so too did the complex- the British Empire until 1968 and subject to British standards for ity of science and procedures within these texts. Believing in the nursing profession. These standards influenced both Davis’s nursing as a lifelong learning process, Davis became the first own further education and the nursing regulatory process that editor of the Nazarene Nursing News. This publication gave Swazi she helped formulate.8 nurses the opportunity to contribute articles and aided graduate continuing education. Davis also coauthored the 1965 Swaziland Building the Foundation Nurse Practice Act, legislation that was so well written that it was not revised until 1999. In addition, she started the Swaziland In early 1943 Davis placed herself on night duty in the hospital so Nursing Journal, and in 1975 she wrote Nursing in Swaziland, a that her mornings and evenings would be free for teaching and historical booklet on the regulatory process followed in estab- for clinic visits. She always integrated nursing education with lishing nursing education and practice in Swaziland.14 Christian education. Mildred Dlamini, a student in Davis’s first While Davis was teaching nursing in Swaziland, she was class, recalled, “Sister Davis, she worked very hard with first year also building a spiritual foundation by preaching and opening students that come. I do thank Sister Dorothy Davis, what she churches. By 1948 she had completed all study and experience teach us besides nursing, what she teach us about God.”9 requirements and was ordained as an elder in the Church of the During the ensuing years, Davis expanded her credentials both in nursing and in ministry. Her professional growth and development included learning about, and then teaching about, While teaching nursing, new diseases and causes of ill-health common to Swaziland. These included syphilis (the most common cause of morbidity Davis was also building a and mortality), malaria, bilharziasis, leprosy, tuberculosis, trauma spiritual foundation by (from drinking, fights, and automobile crashes), burns from cooking fires and lightning, malnutrition, and pregnancy- preaching and opening related complications. In an effort to remain current with ad- churches. vancing nursing science knowledge, Davis subscribed to the American Journal of Nursing.10 In 1945 Davis completed all requirements in Zulu study. In Nazarene while on furlough in California. Back in Swaziland she 1946 she became a certified nurse midwife, thus meeting a British held services in the hospital wards and daily in the nursing requirement. Believing that she should train with Bantu nurses in school chapel. For a time she was in charge of all Nazarene the care of Bantu patients (Bantus were, and are, the majority in Sunday schools in the country. Nurse Hope Dlamini reported the region), Davis resisted pressure to train in a white hospital that before Davis and students opened the antenatal and child and completed her midwifery training at McCord-Zulu Hospital welfare clinic for the day, Davis held a service.15 Nurse Martha in Durban, South Africa. Because of her accomplished midwifery Zubuko, former student of Davis and now a pastor’s wife at the skills, she would later be called upon to deliver very high-risk Enculwini church, clinic, and school started by Davis, stated: patients in homes and in the hospital.11 “Dorothy was a preacher. She was not only a nurse, she was a In focused preparation for serving as the principal of the preacher. She conducted services in the morning and used to Nazarene nursing school, Davis next completed her sister tutor attend the prayer and fasting services. On Sundays . she has to training in London, England, in 1951. This too was a requirement go outside and take some nurses outside to go and preach. And of the British government. Back in Swaziland, creative teaching I was one of those whom she helped spiritually.”16 was a necessity for Davis. She stated, “I always took some of the Davis placed herself in a unique position in her effort to nurses with me and used it as a teaching point.