He qualified from St Bartholomew's Hospital and was appointed to the staff of the Royal Northern Hospital. He worked for some years in the Malayan Medical Service, and after the war of 1939-45 was elected surgeon to the General Hospital, Leicester. He was a Hunterian Professor at the College in 1948, lecturing on the treatment of peptic ulcer by vagotomy (*Annals of the College*, 1948, 2, 248-260). Beattie emigrated to Canada, where he was surgeon to the Union Hospital, Swift Current, Saskatchewan, and in 1954 was elected President of the medical staff. He became a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons at Ottawa, and of the American College of Surgeons and the International College of Surgeons, both at Chicago. In later years he changed the order of his first names from "Davis Andrew" to "Andrew Davis", but was generally known as David Beattie. He died suddenly on 24 November 1961, aged about 52, and was survived by his wife.