Valerie Cowie: influential psychiatrist and geneticist

bmj;382/jul24_5/p1705/FAF1faThe English language is an unforgiving battlefield where many doctors fall. Valerie Cowie, who had a bronze bust cast by the prestigious sculptor David Wynne, was not one of them.Witness the glowing review in the British Journal of Psychiatry in 1972 of the book she co-wrote with her mentor, Eliot Slater, who was renowned for his genetic and clinical investigations into schizophrenia, manic depressive illness, and the neurotic constitution.The review reads: “The appearance of this book [The Genetics of Mental Disorder] is an event . . . and such stimulating reading. And it does not contain one superfluous word.” Slater was also an outstanding writer and editor and later credited by Martin Roth for transforming the British Journal of Psychiatry into “a leading international journal of psychiatric clinical science.”Slater encouraged Cowie’s forays into science communication, but she had a natural gift for languages. As a child she excelled in Greek…
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