Margaret Ida Balfour, CBE, MD, CM, FRCOG (1866-1945)

Margaret Ida Balfour was the daughter of Robert Balfour CA of Edinburgh. She qualified in medicine in 1891 and sailed for India in 1892, where she worked in Ludhiana, Nahan State and Patiala, and was then appointed assistant to the Inspector General of Civil Hospitals, Punjab, in 1914. In 1916 she became Chief Medical Officer of the recently formed Women's Medical Service, a post she held until 1924. She was also Secretary of the Countess of Dufferin Fund. Following her retirement she made several return visits to India in connection with her research on tropical anaemias with Dr Lucy Wills. Her book, co-authored with Ruth Young, The Work of Medical Women in India, was published in 1929 by Oxford University Press, with a foreword by Dame Mary Scharlieb. She was also one of the founders of the Overseas Association of the Medical Women's Federation. She was honorary archivist of the Federation. During the Second World War she played an active role as an ARP medical officer in London.

There is an extensive obituary in Medical Women's Federation Quarterly January 1946 and an entry in Sir John Peel, The lives of the fellows of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists: 1929-1969