Catherine Norrie and Margaret McKenzie Swanson

Miss Catherine Norrie and Mrs Margaret Swanson were sisters who were founding members of the first Society of Chiropodists in this country. In 1924 the two sisters founded the Edinburgh Foot Clinic as a charitable institution for the free treatment of necessitous patients. The overwhelming demand for treatment uncovered by the new Clinic led shortly to its expansion into a School of Chiropody with the collaboration of prominent members of the University medical school and the Royal Colleges. Both sisters played dominant roles in the formulation and teaching of the curriculum, the first in the country to be planned over two academic years. 

For many years thereafter, Mrs Swanson took a leading part in the administration and teaching. On her retirement from active teaching in 1945, she devoted part of her inexhaustible energy to the preparation of a Textbook of Chiropody which was published in 1948 and was followed by a second edition in 1954.

For Miss Norrie, she probably did more than anyone over many years to rally medical opinion to recognise the profession and she won considerable respect from the Royal Colleges both north and south of the border and from the British Medical Association (BMA). The subsequent recognition of chiropody/podiatry by the BMA and the agreement of the English Royal Colleges to approve the medical examiners for examinations owed a great deal to her personal efforts.