Sir Andrew Balfour (21 March 1873 – 30 January 1931) was a Scottish Medical Officer who specialised in tropical medicine. Balfour spent twelve years in Khartoum, Sudan and was the Medical Officer of Health in the city. As well as writing medical publications, Balfour also wrote historical fiction and fantasy novels, the majority of which were published from 1897 to 1903. In his youth Balfour was also a notable sportsman playing rugby union for Cambridge University in the Varsity Match and was selected to represent the Scotland national team.
Medical career
Balfour was born in Edinburgh on 21 March 1873 to Thomas Alexander Goldie Balfour. Balfour was educated at George Watson's College before matriculating to Edinburgh University.
He graduated from Edinburgh with a MB, CM degree in 1894 and joined his father's medical practice. Within two years of leaving Edinburgh University, Balfour returned to education when he entered Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, as an advanced student. Balfour spent his time in Cambridge specialising in the prevention of disease, the field in which he would concentrate the rest of his medical career. He studied under Kanthack, performing research work on typhoid fever, and later spent a period of study at Strasbourg, before taking the D.PH. at Cambridge in 1897.
He completed his MD in Edinburgh in 1898; his thesis on the toxicity of dyestuffs in relation to river pollution winning him the student gold medal. He returned to the university to earn a BSc in Public Health in 1900.
In April 1900, Balfour travelled to South Africa to serve as a civil surgeon in the Second Boer War. He was posted to Estcourt as part of No. 7 General Hospital and later given duty at the pestilential typhoid camp in Pretoria. Later in the campaign he was put in charge of the British Garrison and Boer Laagers at Kaapsehoop. While in South Africa, Balfour contracted typhoid and returned to England before the end of 1901. During his time in South Africa, he came under the influence of the prominent Scottish parasitologist Patrick Manson, and from this period he became an ardent student of tropical medicine.
Balfour married in September 1902 to Grace, daughter of G Nutter of Sidcup, and the same year he was made the director of the Wellcome Tropical Research Laboratory in Khartoum in Sudan where he also took up the post of Medical Officer of Health. Within two years he was appointed sanitary advisor to the Sudanese government. His new role within Sudan allowed Balfour to move in high-profile social circles, bringing him into contact with the likes of Lord Cromer, Lord Kitchener and Sir Reginald Wingate. During his time in Khartoum, he reduced deaths by malaria by 90 per cent through the removal of mosquito breeding grounds and improving the city's clean water systems and sanitation. In 1907 the Khedive awarded him the Fourth Class of the Imperial Ottoman Order of Osmanieh. The same period also saw Balfour contribute to four reports produced by the Wellcome Laboratory and in 1911 he co-wrote with Major R.G. Archibald a review of the advances in tropical medicine, which anticipated the work of the Tropical Disease Bureau which was set up in 1912.
His time in Africa also saw Balfour oversee the introduction of a floating laboratory, a gift from Dr Henry Wellcome to the Sudan Government. This allowed the department to conduct scientific work in the upper reaches of the Nile, and aided the understanding of diseases of the blood. Balfour's most notable work during this period was on spirochaetosis. He was appointed Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George in the 1912 King's Birthday Honours. After suffering from ill-health in Africa, he returned to Britain in 1913, to found the Wellcome Bureau of Scientific Research in London, and to organise what would later become the Wellcome Museum of Medical Science. 1913 also saw Balfour travel South America and the West Indies for research purposes.
With the outbreak of World War I, Balfour again joined the British war effort. Serving in the Royal Army Medical Corps, he reached the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. Originally posted in France in 1914, he was later a member of the medical advisory committee in Mudros, Salonica and Egypt. After returning to England he was given the role of scientific adviser to the Inspector Surgeon General of the British forces in East Africa. During the war he was appointed Companion of the Order of the Bath in the 1918 New Year Honours, and was Mentioned in Despatches on 12 February 1918. He relinquished his commission on 31 May 1919. In 1920 he was awarded the Mary Kingsley award by the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine.