1922 Encyclopædia Britannica/Ilkeston, Balthazar Walter Foster, 1st Baron

ILKESTON, BALTHAZAR WALTER FOSTER, 1st Baron (1840-1913), British physician and politician, was born at Cambridge July 17 1840. He was educated at Drogheda and Trinity College, Dublin, where he studied medicine. He afterwards (1860) became medical tutor and professor of practical anatomy at Queen's College, Birmingham, was professor of anatomy there 1864-5, and professor of materia medica at Sydenham College, Birmingham, from 1865 to 1868. In the latter year the two colleges amalgamated, and he then became professor of medicine, and in 1892 was appointed emeritus professor of medicine. In 1886 he was knighted. In 1885 he had successfully contested Chester as a Liberal, but lost the seat in 1886; in 1887, however, he was elected for the Ilkeston division of Derby, which he retained until 1910. From 1892 to 1895 he was parliamentary secretary to the Local Government Board, and in 1906 was sworn of the Privy Council. The same year he received the gold medal of the British Medical Association. He was made a peer in 1910, and died in London Jan. 31 1913.

He published various medical works, including The Use of the Sphygmograph in Heart Diseases (1866); Method and Medicine (1870); Clinical Medicine (1874); Political Powerlessness of the Medical Profession (1883) and Public Aspects of Medicine (1890).