8vo). He also wrote a prefatory description of the districts dealt with in a 'Barometrical Survey of India,' issued in 1853 under the editorship of a committee, of which Balfour was chairman, and in 1856 he published 'Localities of India exempt from Cholera.'
In 1857 appeared at Madras the work by which Balfour is best known, 'The Encyclopædia of India and of Eastern and Southern Asia, Commercial, Industrial, and Scientific.' This book embodied great experience, vast reading, and indomitable industry. A second edition in five volumes appeared in India in 1873, and between 1877 and 1884 Balfour revised the book for publication in England. After the first edition the word 'Cyclopædia' was substituted in the title for 'Encyclopædia.' The third edition, which was published in London in 1885, was at many points superior to the earlier impressions. Balfour's outlay on it was lavish and ungrudging, but the usefulness of the work was soon generally recognised, and the whole expenditure was met within two years.
From 1858 to 1861 Balfour was commissioner for investigating the debts of the nawab of the Carnatic, at whose court he was for many years political agent. He acted for a short period as assistant assay master at the Madras mint, and in the military finance department of India he was at Madras examiner of medical accounts.
In 1862 he joined the administrative grade of the Madras medical staff. He was deputy inspector-general of hospitals from 1862 to 1870, and during this period he served as deputy surgeon-general in the Burmah division, the Straits Settlements, the Andamans, twice in the ceded districts, twice in the Mysore division, and for four years with the Hyderabad subsidiary force and Hyderabad cont ingent. He displayed the utmost energy in the personal inspection of his districts, and proved his continued interest in scientific matters by instituting the Mysore Museum in 1866, and by publishing at Madras a work on 'The Timber Trees, Timber, and Fancy Woods, as also the Forests of India and of Eastern and Southern Asia,' which reached a second edition in 1862, and a third in 1870.
From 1871 to 1876 Balfour was, as surgeon-general, head of the Madras medical department. In the second year of his period of office he conferred a great benefit on the natives of India by drawing the attention of the Madras government to the necessity for educating women in the medical profession, native social customs being such that native women, were debarred alike from receiving visits from medical men and from attending at the public hospitals and dispensaries. As a result the Madras Medical College was in 1875 opened to women, and his services in this direction were commemorated in 1891 by the endowment at Madras University of a 'Balfour memorial' gold medal, with the object of encouraging the medical education of women. Balfour's last publications before leaving India were two pamphlets with the general title 'Medical Hints to the People of India.' They bore respectively the subtitles, 'The Vydian and the Hakim, what do they know of Medicine?' and 'Eminent Medical Men of Asia, Africa, Europe, and America, who have advanced Medical Science.' Both appeared at Madras in 1875, and reached second editions in the following year.
In 1876 Balfour finally returned to England with a good service pension, after forty-two years' residence in India. Before his departure public acknowledgment of his labours was made in an address presented to him at Madras by the Hindu, Mohammedan, and European communities. His portrait was placed in the Government Central Museum.
In England, besides preparing for the press the third edition of his 'Encyclopædia of India,' he issued 'Indian Forestry' (1885) and 'The Agricultural Pests of India and of Eastern and Southern Asia, Vegetable, Animal' (1887). He died on 8 Dec. 1889 at 107 Gloucester Terrace, Hyde Park, at the age of seventy-six. He married, on 24 May 1852, the eldest daughter of Dr. Gilchrist of Madras.
Balfour was a fellow of the Madras University, and a corresponding member of the Imperial Royal Geological Institute of Vienna. In addition to the works enumerated above, he translated into Hindustani Dr. J. T. Conquest's 'Outlines of Midwifery,' and procured and printed at his own expense translations of the same work in Tamil, Telugu, and Canarese. He also translated into Hindustani Gleig's ' Astronomy,' and prepared in 1854 a diglot Hindustani and English 'Statistical Map of the World,' which was also rendered and printed in Tamil and Telugu. To periodical literature he made a large number of contributions on various subjects, a list of which is given in the 'Cyclopædia of India' (3rd edit. 1885).
His elder brother, Sir George Balfour (1809–1894), general and politician, was born at Montrose in 1809. He was educated at the Military Academy at Addiscombe, entered the Madras artillery in 1825, and in the following year joined the royal artillery, and
