Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 1.djvu/139

 acting staff of the hospital in 1896. He was thereupon nominated emeritus professor and honorary consulting physician. His lectures on medicine, although they included a useful series 'On Slight Ailments, their Nature and Treatment' (1880; new edit. 1887), did not as a rule supply teaching for examination purposes ; but if the audience was small, it was stimulated by Beale's scientific insight. At the Royal College of Physicians Beale became a member in 1856 and a fellow in 1859. In 1871 he was awarded the biennial Baly gold medal for his physiological work in relation to medicine. He delivered the Lumleian lectures in 1875 on 'Life and Vital Action in Health and Disease.' He was frequently examiner to the college, a member of the council in 1877-8, censor 1881-2, and curator of the museum 1876-88.

From early life Beale was a voluminous writer, reading over 100 papers on medical subjects between 1851 and 1858 before scientific and medical societies. Of his many separately published books, the earliest, 'The Microscope and its Application to Clinical Medicine' (1854), came out when he was twenty-nine and foretold his ultimate position as one of the most brilliant of English microscopists, who not only introduced new methods of microscopic research but also showed the value of the microscope to diagnosis in clinical medicine. The word 'practical' replaced 'clinical' in subsequent editions of this work, the fourth and last of which appeared in 1870. There followed in 1857 'The Use of the Microscope in Clinical Medicine'; in later editions, the fifth and last of which appeared in 1880, the title was changed to 'How to Work with the Microscope.' In 1858 he published a small book, 'Illustrations of the Constituents of the Urine, Urinary Deposits and Calculi' (2nd edit. 1869), and in 1861 a larger work 'On Urine, Urinary Deposits, and Calculi, their Microscopical and Chemical Examination' (12mo; 2nd edit. 1864, with 'and Treatment, &c.' added to the title; American edit. 1885). Other important early works were 'On the Structure of the Simple Tissues of the Human Body' (1861; German trans. 1862) and 'The Structure and Growth of the Tissues, and on Life' (1865).

Beale's scientific promise was acknowledged in 1865 by his election as fellow of the Royal Society, where he delivered the Croonian lectures in the same year on 'The Ultimate Nerve Fibres distributed to the Muscles and to some other Tissues.' In 1868-9 he lectured at Oxford for the Radcliffe trustees on 'Disease Germs.' He embodied his conclusions in two books: 'Disease Germs, their Supposed Nature' (1870), and 'Disease Germs, their Real Nature, an Original Investigation' (1870). Both were reissued in 'Disease Germs, their Nature and Origin' (1872). In 1870 there appeared his 'Protoplasm, or Life and Matter' (4th edit. 1892), and in 1872 his 'Bioplasm, an Introduction to the Study of Physiology and Medicine.' In his works on germs Beale foreshadowed by virtue of ms microscopic methods of investigation some of the most modern conceptions of bacterial disease, anticipating by fully five years the microbic theory of disease and also Pasteur's doctrine of 'immunisation.'

Beale was the first physiological investigator to practise the method of fixing tissues by injections and so prevent the alterations which result in them from uncontrolled post-mortem changes. He also treated tissues with dilute acetic acid, which enabled him to see delicate nerve fibres almost as well as they are seen by modern intra vitam staining methods, and he introduced carmine in ammoniacal solution as a stain for differentiating between the component parts of the tissues. By means of the staining effects of carmine he was able, after a close study of tissues in various conditions, to draw a distinction between the 'germinal' matter or 'bioplasm,' as he called it, and the 'formed' matter of the tissues. Beale's discoveries also included the pyriform nerve ganglion cells, called 'Beale's cells,' and he showed the peculiar arrangement of the two fibres which he thought (incorrectly, as later inquiry shows) were prolonged from them. An unusually good draughtsman, Beale illustrated his books profusely with graphic drawings by himself, many of which were coloured, and all were drawn strictly to scale. He made the drawings direct upon the boxwood blocks, and even engraved many with his own hand. Beale's drawings of Beale's cells are still reproduced in standard works on histology. All his microscopic specimens are in the possession of his son and are still improving in clearness.

In later life Beale was president of the Microscopical Society (1879-1880) and fellow or member of numerous European and American medical or scientific societies. He also acted from 1891 to 1904 as physician to the pensions commutation board and as government medical referee for 