Perspective: Infectious enthusiasm with Helen Davies

You may begin. There is a rustling of paper as students break seals and open exams. A forced silence fills the room. But then the music begins. The sound crescendoes as more and more Penn medical students join in and soon, half the room is humming the "Battle Hymn of the Republic" under their breath. The proctor seems puzzled. But the students are just trying to remember the traits of common types of bacteria. And Helen Davies can proudly claim full responsibility. Davies, a longtime professor of microbiology, is lauded for her creative teaching style, most notably her mnemonic songs about infectious diseases. Ingenious lyrics set to famous tunes infuse the material with Davies' contagious energy, helping students learn the facts. A ditty about leprosy, one of Davies' favorites, is set to the tune of the Beatles' "Yesterday." Leprosy, Bits and pieces falling off of me, But it isn't the toxicity, It's just neglect of injury. Suddenly, I'm not half the man I used to be, Can't feel anything peripherally, from swollen nerves hypersensitivity.... Tuberculosis to the cadence of Bizet's "Chanson du Toreador." A herpes ballad to "The Sound of Silence." Congenital infections meet "I Will Survive." "It is amazing how many M.D.s come back to campus ten years later and can sing all the words to those songs," says Phoebe Leboy, one of Davies' closest friends and a fellow Penn professor who works at the Dental School. And soon, they won't have to trek all the way back to campus for their nostalgic sing-alongs. Davies is taking her show on the road -- first stop: New York City. "On February 2, I am going to take my Infectious Disease songs to a night club in New York," Davies says between peals of laughter. "This is crazy... I am doing a night club act!" Granted, it's an intellectual scene. The joint is run by a Nobel Laureate, and you're more likely to see sweater vests and martinis than tube tops and body shots -- but hey, a gig is a gig. While her musical flare and inventive teaching are two of Davies' claims to fame at Penn, she has also been instrumental in recruiting minorities and women into biomedical careers and securing their freedoms on both university and national levels. "In addition to all [Helen's] good deeds... she's a scientist," Leboy stresses. And as the product of an age when the scientific terrain was inhospitable to women, Davies' many accomplishments are a testament to her immense intelligence, courage and perseverance. •

While Davies' struggles have paved the way for fellow women pursuing the sciences, Davies doesn't think of herself as a trailblazer. First and foremost, Davies says she is a microbiologist. Observations of kinetics. Rates of reaction. Not exactly poetic phrases to rouse the spirits or quicken the pulse, but these technical terms are music to Davies' ears. "I can't ever remember not being fascinated by science," she says. When Davies was about eight years old, she took her first look through a microscope and discovered that mirrors and lenses form a window into another realm. While she couldn't afford a microscope of her own, she did have enough pocket money to purchase slides and cover-slips. She would carefully drop concoctions onto her slides, secure them under the thin slivers of glass and use whatever lenses she could find in order to take a closer look. Davies, who was recently named a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, eventually found her niche in microbiology. Her most important research focused on part of the biological system that produces the energy a cell needs to operate. During her research, in coordination with colleague Lucille Smith, Davies discovered a very interesting phenomenon. Usually, in enzymatic reactions, there is a maximum rate at which the reaction can run. However, Davies discovered a particular system which defied these standards -- the rate of the reaction kept increasing. "You could never saturate the system," she says. Much like Davies herself, it just kept churning out energy at a faster and faster rate. • Davies is used to living life in the fast lane. The daughter of a New York rabbi, she grew up in a bustling household where much of her companionship came from Mrs. Smith, her family's black housekeeper. The young Davies, who understood the name "MissesSmith" as a single word, admired the warmth and kindness of her caretaker. She sought to emulate her, believing for years that her own eyes were brown like Mrs. Smith's and not pale blue like her parents'. "I truly have a very weird kind of sense when people talk about African Americans," Davies says. "In my head I'm saying, 'yes, we.'" From very early on, many of her boyfriends were black. And her kinship with blacks has entered into her work in the sciences as well. "As soon as I was in a position to have people working with me, I wanted to get young black people in order to get them into biomedical fields," she says. "There are probably people out there who think she's black," Leboy says. "Helen grew up with a key sense of fairness, equity and justice, and it's always been extremely important for her." These feelings led to Davies' involvement with the Civil Rights Movement during the 1960s. She traveled with the Medical Committee for Human Rights to Birmingham, Ala., and Jackson, Miss., to protect the students who were there fighting to expedite black voter registration. She later marched in the momentous demonstration at Selma, Ala. And Davies passed her social values onto her children, who were also active in the Civil Rights Movement. "I was once at a very staid dinner with Helen in the late '60s," Leboy recalls. "She got a phone call, and she came over and said she had to leave because one of her sons had been arrested at a demonstration, and she had to go bail him out. And I said, 'Helen, how do you know where to go?'" "You think it's the first time my son's been arrested?" Davies replied, heading for the door with the determined stride of a proud parent. While they may have detained both of her sons at one point, the police never dared to take on Davies herself. Like many white women protesters in the South, Davies donned white gloves and other genteel items, adopting the fa‡ade of a "proper" lady. "I guess they thought, 'Well, she's just this little white woman, she couldn't do anything really mean,'" she says. They thought wrong. Enter Bobby Ross, a student who faced Davies' benevolent wrath. As one of the few black students going pre-med at Penn at the time, he had just received a "C" in his calculus class. In a moment of self-doubt and discouragement, he dashed to the registrar's office, trading all his science courses for classes in international relations. Having worked in Davies' lab freshman year, Ross then headed to her office to lament his shattered confidence. She listened thoughtfully, her lucid blue eyes fixed intently upon him. More than 20 years later, Robert Ross, M.D., has served as the Philadelphia Health Commissioner and is currently the president and CEO of a major California health foundation. "She basically just got in my face and said, 'I don't want to hear any of this wallowing in self-pity bull. I want you to march your butt back down to the registrar's office and sign up for those science classes!'" The 6'2'' Ross chuckles as he remembers the "short little Jewish lady waving her finger... threatening [me] with physical harm." • But Davies isn't usually a bully. If a caricature artist were to sketch her, the product might bear some resemblance to the Cheshire cat -- but without any trace of smugness. Her smile is undoubtedly her most striking feature, bright and strong against the soft lines of her face. She invites confidence, and one is immediately at ease in her presence. "She's just so warm and open, and she just takes you in," says Meredith Chiaccio, a special sciences post-bac student who has worked closely with Davies. "She's like a surrogate grandmom... the coolest 77-year-old woman I know." Chiaccio certainly isn't the first or only student to feel adopted by Davies. Davies' foster daughter, Lisa Harris, first met her while working in her lab as part of the Health Education Program at Penn, which Davies founded to give opportunities to black high school students. Harris, who went on through college and graduate programs in sociology, is now happily married and about to become a mother. As for Davies, she's thrilled about becoming a grandmother. "I'm ready to burp," she says with a smile as she holds an imaginary baby over her shoulder, firmly patting its back. • But, there is the rare occasion when Davies doesn't smile. She isn't smiling in the portrait that hangs in Stemmler Hall, located behind the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. She appears very solemn. It was the painter's request -- "You are a visionary looking into the future," he told her. Davies didn't even want to be painted. In fact, she protested. Use the money for research, a scholarship, something productive, she pleaded. But in 1996, the portrait of Davies, commissioned by the University, was unveiled. Her female students had presented her with a rationale she couldn't contest. "They said, we walk down the corridors and there are men, men, men, men... and I'm tired of that, and I would like to see a woman, and even if they don't know who you are, they will know there was a woman we thought high enough of to have put money together to have her portrait done." For Davies, that's all it took. She was tired of it, too. When she first began to teach, not only were there no women on the walls, there were hardly any on the faculty. After completing her Ph.D. here at Penn in 1960, Davies began teaching microbiology to medical students in 1962. But she didn't become a full professor in the department until 1982 -- a full two decades later. And she certainly wasn't the only one to suffer the menace of academic bureaucracy. Other women found themselves in the same position, unjustly confined to the rank of untenured assistant professor. Along with other women, including Leboy, Davies helped form a women's group that advocated for equality. As Leboy recalls, "It wasn't a pretty fight." "Fighting for women on this campus when I did not have tenure myself was something I felt was absolutely important, and I did it," Davies says. "I chaired the academic freedom committee on the University Senate at a time I didn't have tenure, which really I should not have done." But the audacious women's group took on the administration, and in the end, the women won. • While Davies once fought long and hard to secure a position on the faculty at Penn, it is now the students who must fight to gain admission to her classes. She loves working closely with students, eager to share her knowledge and passion for the material. And the best part, according to Davies, is "knowing I can get through to people, that I can watch glazed eyes shine." "It is exhilarating when you see something for the first time that nobody ever saw before," she says. "It is just overwhelming, you can hardly cope with the kind of joy you get. And when your students get that and come and tell you 'Come and look and see what I've done!' -- it's tremendous." Her office is filled with piles of microbiology books and journals that won't fit on her shelves. While most professors might emblazon their walls with signs of their achievements, the three-layer thick accumulation of plaques and awards arranged haphazardly on Davies' windowsill seem an afterthought. Among the most impressive are Penn's Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching and the American Medical Student Association's National Excellence in Teaching Award. Students relish Davies' fresh approach and infectious energy, and word has it that she does a mean whooping cough impression. "In medical school, both the volume of material as well as the content can really be overwhelming and dull," Ross says. "She had a way of making the classroom material and the readings leap off the page.... It was her enthusiasm. You're initial reaction is, 'Is this woman for real or what?'" Yes, that's the real Helen Davies.

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