Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 1.djvu/108

 1881 he severed his connection with the Wesleyan mission, and was immediately appointed premier by King George. Under his guidance the constitution was revised, and the little kingdom of 20,000 people was loaded with a cabinet, privy council, and two houses of Parliament. In 1885 a Wesleyan Free Church was set up by Baker in opposition to the conference in Sydney. Unfortunately Baker's government attempted to coerce members of the old church by persecution, and in January 1887 the discontent culminated in a determined attempt on Baker's life, in which his son and daughter were injured. Four natives were executed and others sentenced to imprisonment for this attempt. Secure in the confidence of the king, Baker was now all-powerful; he had taught the people to acquire many of the externals of prosperity and civilisation. But he had failed to conciliate the powerful chiefs, whose position as the king's advisers he had usurped. In 1890 they appealed against him to Sir John Thurston, the British high commissioner, who removed him from the islands for two years. When he returned in 1893 King George was dead, and his political influence was at an end. Disappointed in his hope of preferment among Wesleyan adherents, he proceeded to set up a branch of the Church of England, which gained a good many followers. He died at Haapai on 30 Nov. 1903. He was married, and had one son and four daughters.  BALFOUR, GEORGE WILLIAM (1823–1903), physician, born at the Manse of Sorn, Ayrshire, on 2 June 1823, was sixth son and eighth of the thirteen children of Lewis Balfour, D.D., by his wife Henrietta Scott, third daughter of George Smith, D.D., minister of Galston, who is satirised by Burns in 'The Holy Fair.' The father was grandson, on his father's side, of James Balfour (1705-1795) [q. v.] of Pilrig, professor of moral philosophy and of public law at Edinburgh, and on his mother's side of Robert Whytt [q. v.], professor of medicine at Edinburgh. Of George William's brothers the eldest, John Balfour (d. 1887), surgeon to the East India Company, served throughout the second Burmese war and the Mutiny, and finally practised his profession at Leven, in Fife. Another brother, Mackintosh, who spent his life in India, became manager of the Agra bank. A sister, Margaret Isabella, married Thomas Stevenson [q. v.], the lighthouse engineer, and was mother of Robert Louis Stevenson [q. v.].

George William, after education at Colinton, to which parish his father was transferred in the boy's infancy, began the study of veterinary science with a view to settling in Australia; but soon resolving to join the medical profession, he entered the Medical School of Edinburgh. In 1845 he graduated M.D. at St. Andrews, and became L.R.C.S. Edinburgh. After acting as house surgeon to the Maternity Hospital of Edinburgh, he in 1846 proceeded to Vienna, where he studied the clinical methods of Skoda, the pathological researches of Sigmund, and the homœopathic treatment of Fleischmann. On his return from Austria, in 1846, he published papers on 'The Treatment of Pneumonia as practised by Skoda' (Northern Journal of Medicine, Jan. 1846, p. 55); on 'Necrosis of the Jaw induced by Phosphorus as taught by Sigmund' (ibid. May 1846, p. 284); and on 'The Homœopathic Treatment of Acute Diseases by Fleischmann' (British and Foreign Medico-Chirurgical Review, Oct. 1846, p. 567), which at once placed him in the front rank of the younger medical inquirers. Thenceforth Balfour contributed largely to medical literature.

Balfour was a general practitioner in the county of Midlothian from 1846 till 1857, when he removed to Edinburgh, and practised as a physician on becoming F.R.C.P. Edinburgh in 1861. In 1866 he was appointed physician to the Royal Hospital for Sick Children, and from 1867 he was physician to the Royal Infirmary, being appointed consulting physician in 1882, on the expiry of his term of office. At the infirmary Balfour won general recognition as a clinical teacher of the first eminence, alike in the lecture theatre, at the bedside, and through his writings. For the New Sydenham Society he translated (1861-5) the 'Hand-book of the Practice of Forensic Medicine,' by Johann Ludwig Casper. In 1865 he published 'An Introduction to the Study of Medicine'—a work which well illustrated his philosophic temper, independent 