Thomas Graham Balfour, pioneering medical statistician and stern disciplinarian.

Thomas Graham Balfour (1813-1891) joined the Army Medical Department in 1836, becoming Assistant Surgeon to the 1st (Grenadier) Guards in 1840. He went on to become Surgeon-General of the British Army, and is chiefly remembered for his analyses of the military medical and veterinary (equine) statistics that had accrued since the Battle of Waterloo. Major Alexander Tulloch, Balfour’s superior officer in 1840, recognized Graham’s talent in statistical analysis in a glowing letter to the Secretary at War. Seven years later, in 1847, Tulloch (by then Colonel Tulloch) wrote to the Minister at War seeking funds for Balfour to conduct a statistical analysis of incapacity and mortality among army pensioners. It is not known whether these funds were forthcoming. From 1848 to 1858 Balfour served as StaffSurgeon at the Royal Military Asylum at Chelsea. The Asylum was founded by royal warrant given at the Court of St James on 24 June 1801. As part of his reforms to modernize the army, the Duke of York, Commander-in-Chief of the Army and second son of George III, was principally responsible for founding the Royal Military Asylum for children (boys and girls) of soldiers killed or injured in the Great War with France (1793-1815). It was designed to accommodate 500 boys and 250 girls, but by 1814, it was home to 990 boys and 466 girls. In 1892, the Royal Military Asylum was renamed the Duke of York’s Royal Military School, and relocated to new premises at Dover in 1908. It was while Balfour was at the Royal Military Asylum in the middle of the 19th century that he conducted a controlled trial to assess the effect of administering belladonna to prevent scarlet fever (‘scarlatina’). Balfour’s account of the trial was recorded by Charles West, founder of the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, in a book about diseases of infancy and childhood. Balfour’s account of his trial has been rated ‘...one of the most succinct and careful accounts of a clinical experiment ever written’. Balfour wrote: