294 THE EDINBURGH PROFESSORS 



London, was a fellow-student, and together they, in this and 

 following- years, made many botanical excursions about Edin- 

 burgh. With his fellows Balfour seems to have been bon 

 camarade, acquired all the ephemeral distinction attaching to a 

 facile writer of rhymed couplets for occasions, and as an in- 

 veterate maker of puns was in demand for the office of punster 

 at the convivial clubs of the period. A mark of more serious 

 attainment he was President of the Royal Medical Society 

 in two years. After graduation as M.D., when he also became 

 a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons in Edinburgh his 

 thesis for the former being " De Strychnia," for the latter " On 

 Purulent Wounds" Balfour went in 1832 to Paris to continue 

 his medical education, studying there under Dupuytren, Lisfranc, 

 and Manec. Returning, he settled in Edinburgh in 1834 and 

 entered on practice, becoming assistant within and without the 

 University to Sir George Ballingall, Professor of Military Surgery. 

 Amongst his patients he numbered De Quincey and his family. 

 De Quincey's eldest son died from a cerebral complaint, and 

 the autopsy revealed an interesting pathological condition which 

 formed the subject of Balfour's investigation, and an account of 

 it his first published scientific paper. 



From the claims of Medicine Balfour could wrest little time 

 for botanical pursuits, but his holiday always meant the botanical 

 exploration of some area, preferably alpine, and his home be- 

 came a centre for men of kindred tastes. There in co-operation 

 with his old teacher Graham, and with Greville, Forbes, Falconer, 

 Parnell, Munby and others, was instituted in 1836 the Botanical 

 Society of Edinburgh, with wide aims for the promotion of 

 Botany amongst them the creation of a botanical library and 

 a herbarium. This has proved a signal service to science. It 

 was the pegging out of a claim which has been made effective. 

 The Society after a life as with all such societies of fluc- 

 tuating periods of greater and lesser activity, flourishes still, 

 and its library and herbarium, transferred to the Crown when 

 the space demand of their bulk became urgent, have been the 

 foundation for the large botanical library and herbarium now 

 maintained and subsidised by Government in the Royal Botanic 

 Garden. 



