Valerie Cowie obituary

My friend and colleague Valerie Cowie, who has died aged 99, was a pioneer in psychiatric genetics and the psychiatry of learning disability, and the only person I ever knew whose clinical and scientific training included both cytogenetics and psychoanalysis.As a junior doctor at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary in the late 1940s, Valerie was one of the first to carry out dietary treatment of the genetic disorder phenylketonuria, showing that this could prevent the development of intellectual disability. She subsequently trained in psychiatry at the Maudsley hospital in London from 1952 until 1954, where she came under the mentorship ofEliot Slater, a pioneer in psychiatric genetics. Valerie herself studied babies with Down ’s syndrome, being the first to describe detailed measures of their early neurological and psychological development.Continue reading...
Source: Guardian Unlimited Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: Psychiatry Genetics Scotland Source Type: news