BALFOUR'S CAREER 295 



Plants gradually drew Balfour away from patients and in 

 1840 he carried the divorce so far as to establish himself as a 

 teacher of Botany in the Extra-mural Medical School in Edin- 

 burgh that exemplar of free-trade in teaching from which so 

 many of the famous occupants of Chairs in the University have 

 entered its portals. But only in 1842, when Sir William Hooker 

 moved to Kew and a vacancy was then caused in the Glasgow 

 Chair of Botany to which Balfour was elected, was he able to 

 give up medical practice entirely. 



In Glasgow the first years of Balfour's botanical career 

 were spent, but they were few. On the death of Graham he 

 returned to Edinburgh as Professor of Medicine and Botany and 

 Keeper of the Royal Botanic Garden the electors passing over 

 Joseph Dalton Hooker also a candidate. In the sphere of these 

 offices the rest of his active life was passed until his retirement 

 in 1879. He came to the University of Edinburgh at a time 

 when the reputation of its medical school was upheld by a remark- 

 able band of teachers in the Medical Faculty Allen Thomson, 

 Alison, Christison, Goodsir, Gregory, Jameson, Simpson, Syme 

 and when the struggle of the University after a revised consti- 

 tution was approaching the climax reached in 1858, when with 

 other Scottish Universities Edinburgh obtained autonomy, and 

 science was enfranchised. Of this Faculty he became Dean, and 

 held office until close upon the time when he became Emeritus. 

 In all the discussions and controversies, destructive and con- 

 structive, that attached to so weighty a crisis, Balfour's influence 

 and outlook for science were used with effect, and no less 

 influential were his action and advice in subsequent years 

 when the specific question of medical reform was raised, as it 



so often was. 



Absorbing administrative work of this kind, to which were 

 soon added the duties of a Secretary of the Royal Society of 

 Edinburgh (and he remained in the Secretariat to the end of 

 his active life) as well as those of an editor of the Edinburgh 

 New Philosophical Journal (afterwards merged in the Annals 

 and Magazine of Natural History) of Secretary of the Royal 

 Caledonian Horticultural Society and of other offices, made 

 inroad alike upon time and energy of a man who had also the 



