Edward Balfour

Edward Green Balfour (6 September, 1813 Angus, Montrose-8 December 1889, Gloucester Terrace, London [Desmond, Ray 1994 Dictionary of British and Irish Botanists and Horticulturists. CRC Press.] ) was a Scottish surgeon, orientalist and pioneering environmentalist in India best known for the Cyclopaedia of India several editions of which were published after 1857.

Life and career

Balfour was the second son of Captain George Balfour of the East India Company marine service and Susan Hume (who was a sister of the radical MP Joseph Hume). His elder brother was Sir George Balfour (1809-1894). After studying at Montrose Academy he studied surgery at Edinburgh university and joined the Royal College of Surgeons in 1833. A family friend arranged a 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 and witnessed ecological destruction about which Bernardin de Saint-Pierre had written.Douglas M. Peers 2004. [http://www.oxforddnb.com/index/101001184/ Oxford Dictionary of National Biography] ] Obituary Med J. 1889 December 14; 2(1511): 1374. [http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/pagerender.fcgi?artid=2156001&pageindex=1 page] ]

Environment

On arrival in India he was attached to a European regiment. He became an assistant surgeon in 1836. His ability with languages particularly Hindi and later Persian helped in 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 stationed with the Madras and Bombay armies, staff-surgeon at Ahmednagar and Bellary from 1862-1872, deputy Surgeon-General in Burma and the Straits Settlements, the Andamans and the Mysore division. During his travels he collected information on health and environmental issues. He was among the first to recognise the possibility of famine due to deforestation and wrote on the links between water and forest cover in "Notes on the influence exercised by trees in inducing rain and preserving moisture" (in the Madras Journal of Literature and Science 25(1849):402-448) as well as reports to the famine commission ("The influence exercised by trees on the climate and productiveness of the Peninsula of India". Famine Commission IV.). He was influenced by the works of Alexander Gibson and Jean Baptiste Boussingault and the East India Company heeded his warning and took up early forest conservation schemes soon after 1840.

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 who was the daughter of a fellow surgeon in Madras.

Health and statistics

Balfour widely used statistics to make judgements on matters of health. His works included "Statistical data for forming troops and maintaining them in health in different climates and localities" (Quarterly Journal of the Statistical Society of London, 8, 1845:192-209) and his "Remarks on the abstract tables of the men discharged from the military" (Quarterly J. of the Statistical Society of London 1851, 14:348-356) which was read by his uncle Joseph Hume to the Statistical Society of London. In this work he dismissed the common belief of humans adjusting in time with new climates and suggested that different races had different tolerances to climate and disease. He showed using statistics that Europeans fared better in the hills of India.

From 1871 to 1876 he was Surgeon-General and headed the Madras Medical Department.

Museums

Balfour was keen on collections and information organization. He founded the Government Central Museum at Madras in 1850 and in 1856 he created the nucleus for the Madras Zoological Gardens in the People's Park. He became the first officer in charge of the museum in Madras. By 1879 the museum was attracting 180000 people per year and in 1886 as much as 230,000. Women visitors were also encouraged by special days. There were pressures to move the museum to the college but Balfour firmly believed that the museum needed to be "...open to all classes, and contains articles calculated to amuse and instruct all classes". [Nair, Savithri Preetha (2007) "ECONOMIC LOGIC VERSUS ENLIGHTENMENT RATIONALITY: Evolution of the museum–zoo–garden complex and the modern Indian city, 1843–1900" in MUSEUM REVOLUTIONS Edited by Simon J. Knell, Suzanne MacLeod and Sheila Watson. Routledge.] He encouraged contributions to the museum stating that "every specimen that may be sent will be acceptable". By 1853, the Museum received about 19,830 specimens. [Subramanian, T. S. (2005) New for old. Frontline. 20(14) [http://hinduonnet.com/fline/fl2014/stories/20030718000106600.htm online] ] In 1866 he started the Mysore Museum. He was a secretary to the Madras Central Committee for the Great Exhibition of 1851 and the Paris Exhibitions of 1855 and 1868, the Internation Exhibition of London (1862) and the Vienna Exhibition (1872).

Local languages and education

Balfour took a special interest in languages and he translated many works from Persian to English as well as English works (such as on astronomy) into Hindi, Tamil and Telugu. He was sceptical of the state of indigenous scientific language and in his "Cyclopaedia" he suggested that indigenous people were so close to subsistence that they did not have the time or means to reflect accurately on their surroundings.

Empowering women

Recognising the importance of women in matters of public health, he personally translated Dr. T. Conquest's "Outlines of Midwifery" into Hindi and arranged for translations into Kannada, Tamil and Telugu. He also attempted to influence the government to open medical schools with teaching in Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam but failed. He later worked towards encouraging European women to enter into medical service in India since he believed that women could move freely within a large segment of Indian society. This move succeeded and in 1875, Mary Scharlieb was admitted to the Madras Medical College as its first woman applicant. Balfour continued to write about India after retiring to England in 1876. He openly held anti-colonialist sentiments which Richard Grove suggests as being linked to the radical ideas of his uncle Joseph Hume, opinions that were also expressed by his cousin Allan Octavian Hume.Grove, Richard. 1995 Green Imperialism: Colonial Expansion, Tropical Island Edens and the Origins of Environmentalism, 1600-1860. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521565138]

Cyclopaedia of India and other works

Balfour's works on collating information about various aspects of life in India led to the publication of the Cyclopaedia of India, the first edition in 1857. It grew into a five volume work in 1871-83.

Some subjects needed more coverage and he produced for instance the first work on the agricultural pests of India, in which he drew inspiration from the work of Eleanor Ormerod.He wrote in the "Agricultural pest of India":

elected works

* [http://www.archive.org/details/agriculturalpest00balfrich The agricultural pests of India, and of eastern and southern Asia, vegetable and animal, injurious to man and his products (1887)]
*"The Vydian and the Hakim, what do they know of medicine?" (1875)
* [http://books.google.com/books?id=32oDAAAAYAAJ The Timber Trees, Timber and Fancy Woods, as also, the Forests (1862)]
*The Cyclopaedia of India and of Eastern and Southern Asia (First published 1857)
*Catalogue of the Government Central Museum (1855) [http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&id=3DoDAAAAQAAJ Google books]
*Cholera (Are there towns or villages in India where cholera has never appeared from the period of its first outbreak in 1817?) being a series of letters from Assistant Surgeon Edward Balfour. Fort St. George Gazette Press. (1852) [http://www.nlm.nih.gov/exhibition/cholera/pdf/101161558.pdf online]
*Remarks on the Abstract Tables of the Men Discharged from the Military Service of the East India Company. (1851) [http://books.google.com/books?id=JOkBAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA348&lpg=PA348 online]
*Additional Observations on the Means of Maintaining Troops in Health. Journal of the Statistical Society of London, Vol. 12, No. 1 (Feb., 1849), pp. 33-42 [http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0959-5341(184902)12%3A1%3C33%3AAOOTMO%3E2.0.CO%3B2-0 JSTOR link]
*Observations on the means of preserving the health of troops by selecting healthy localities for their Cantonments. London (1845)

References

External links

* [http://www.chennaimuseum.org/draft/dept/dept.htm Government Museum, Chennai]