| Activity | After attending a private school in Highgate, Beale entered King's College School, London, at the age of nine, and began an association that lasted for almost the whole of his career. Apprenticed to an apothecary and surgeon in Islington at thirteen, Beale matriculated at the University of London with honours in chemistry and zoology in 1847; he then worked for two years as assistant to Henry Wentworth Acland in the Anatomical Museum at Oxford. He obtained his licence of the Society of Apothecaries in 1849 and in the same year was an inspector for the Board of Health, monitoring the cholera epidemic in Windsor. In 1850–51 he was resident physician at King's College Hospital, and he graduated MB (London) in 1851
In 1852 Beale established a private laboratory in Carey Street and taught medical students physiological chemistry and normal and morbid anatomy, with special emphasis on the use of the microscope. In 1853, at the age of twenty-five, he succeeded Robert Bentley Todd as professor of physiology at King's College, being preferred to Thomas Henry Huxley among other candidates. For the first two years Beale shared the post with William Bowman (1816–1892), who had been Todd's assistant, but he was subsequently sole professor until he resigned the post in 1869. He was then made physician to King's College Hospital and promoted to professor of medicine in 1876. He held both positions until ill health prompted his retirement in 1896, though he retained his links with King's, being nominated emeritus professor and honorary consulting physician.His lectures did not prepare students for passing examinations, but were valued for their scientific merit, and he was also highly regarded as a clinician, especially for speed and intuition in diagnosis. This skill was no doubt honed in the many examinations he made as medical adviser to the Clerical and Medical Assurance Company. He also acted from 1891 to 1904 as physician to the pensions commutation board and as government medical referee for England.
In 1866 Beale's standing as a researcher led to an invitation from the royal commission on the cattle plague to make investigations of the histology of the epizootic disease that was decimating British livestock. In his report he claimed to have found the ‘germs’ of the disease. However, he was unable to convince his peers of the truth of his observations, or of the explanation of the disease he proposed. Although soon regarded as misguided, Beale's objections to the eventually all-conquering bacterial germ theory were well grounded and in the early 1870s were widely cited by those who were opposed to Pasteur, Lister, Tyndall, and their followers.
Beale was elected a member of the Royal College of Physicians in 1856 and became a fellow in 1859; he was a frequent examiner, a member of its council in 1877 and 1878, censor in 1881 and 1882, and curator of the museum from 1876 to 1888. In 1871 he was awarded the Baly gold medal for his physiological work and in 1875 he delivered the Lumleian lectures. Elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1857, Beale was Croonian lecturer in 1865; his address was entitled, ‘The ultimate nerve fibres distributed to the muscles and some other tissues’. He joined the Royal Microscopical Society in 1852, and was president in 1879 and 1880 and treasurer from 1881 to 1890. |