Edward Balfour

Edward Green Balfour (6 September 1813 - 8 December 1889) was a Scottish surgeon, orientalist and pioneering environmentalist in India. He founded museums at Madras and Bangalore, a zoological garden in Madras and was instrumental in raising awareness on forest conservation and public health in India. He published a Cyclopaedia of India, several editions of which were published after 1857, translated works on health into Indian languages and wrote on a variety of subjects. Balfour was born in Angus, Montrose, the second son of Captain George Balfour of the East India Company marine service and Susan Hume (a sister of the radical MP Joseph Hume). His elder brother was Sir George Balfour (1809-1894) who was later a liberal MP for Kincardineshire. He was educated at Montrose Academy then he studied surgery at Edinburgh University and joined the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh in 1833. A family friend arranged his commission as an assistant surgeon in the Madras medical service in India and he set sail for India in 1834. On the way he visited Mauritius where he witnessed ecological destruction about which he had read in the works of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre and Jean-Baptiste Boussingault. This created a lifelong interest in climate change and environmental problems. On arrival in India in 1836 he was attached to a European regiment as an assistant surgeon. He was in medical charge of European and native artillery, native cavalry, Madras and Bombay infantry divisions until 1862. He served as a staff-surgeon at Ahmednagar and at Bellary, and in 1850 he acted as government agent at Chepauk and was a paymaster dealing with Carnatic stipends. His ability with languages particularly Hindi and later Persian helped his transfer into a sepoy regiment. This led him to be posted to smaller areas and he spent the next ten years travelling around southern India. He was often sought by the government as a translator of Hindustani and Persian. In 1848 Balfour returned to Madras and he was given medical charge of the governor's bodyguard. This gave him more time to writing and other interests and he also took up additional appointments as agent to the court of the nawab of the Carnatic. From 1858 to 1861 he served on a commission to look into the debts of the nawab. In 1850, he also served as assistant assay master at the Madras mint. In 1852 he became a full surgeon and on 24 May he married Marion Matilda Agnes Gilchrist, daughter of a fellow surgeon at Madras. He served as deputy Surgeon-General in Burma and the Straits Settlements, the Andamans and the Mysore division. From 1871 to 1876 he was Surgeon-General and headed the Madras Medical Department. Balfour's wife, Marion, would help in the proof-reading of Balfour's encyclopaedia. At the age of seven Marion had been to St. Helena where she happened to see the body of Napoleon.