Margaret Ida Balfour

Margaret Ida Balfour, FRCOG (21 April 1866 – 1 December 1945) was a Scottish medical doctor and campaigner for women’s medical health issues, who made a significant contribution to the development of medicine in India. Her prolific writing during the early 20th century alerted many to the health needs of women and children in India and Africa and the unhealthy environments in which they lived. Early life and education Margaret Balfour, daughter of Frances Grace Blaikie (1820–1891) and Scottish accountant Robert Balfour (1818–1869), both from Aberdeenshire, was born in Edinburgh in 1866. Her brother caught scarlet fever, which infected her father who died from the disease aged 51, and is buried in Dean Cemetery. Balfour may have been driven to pursue a medical career as a result, and she was described as having 'extraordinary determination and intelligence' and 'the iron hand within the velvet glove if she wanted something she would persist' at a time when few woman studied medicine. Balfour studied at Edinburgh School of Medicine for Women under Sophia Jex-Blake and qualified as a doctor in 1891, although women were not permitted to formally graduate from the University of Edinburgh, and she went to France and Belgium to do so. After graduating Balfour spent a year working with Dr Annie McCall at the Clapham Maternity Hospital in South London before moving to India in 1892. Career and research