Dictionary of National Biography, 1901 supplement/Balfour, Thomas Graham
BALFOUR, THOMAS GRAHAM (1813–1891), physician, belonged to the family of Pilrig, and was born in Edinburgh on 18 March 1813. He was son of John Balfour, a merchant of Leith, and his wife Helen, daughter of Thomas Buchanan of Ardoch. He was great-grandson of James Balfour, professor of moral philosophy at Edinburgh in 1754, and of Robert Whytt [q. v.], the celebrated medical writer and professor of physiology at Edinburgh. He graduated M.D. at Edinburgh in 1834, and in 1836 entered the Army Medical Service and was immediately engaged in the first four volumes of the 'Statistics of the British Army,' From 1840 to 1848 he served as assistant surgeon in the grenadier guards. In 1857 he was appointed secretary to Sidney Herbert's committee on the sanitary state of the army, and in 1859 he became deputy inspector-general in charge of the new statistical branch of the army medical department, a post which he held for fourteen years. He was elected F.R.S. on 3 June 1858 and in 1860 a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of London. In 1887 he was appointed honorary physician to the queen. He was placed on half-pay as surgeon-general in 1876, and in his forty years of service had done much to improve the sanitary condition of the forces. He married in 1856 Georgina, daughter of George Prentice of Armagh, and had one son, Graham Balfour. He died at Coombe Lodge, Wimbledon, on 17 Jan. 1891.
[Memoir by his cousin, George W. Balfour; private information; Journal of Royal Statistical Society, 1891.]