Barry Edward O'Meara (1786 – 1836) was an Irish surgeon and founding member of the
Reform Club
The Reform Club is a private members' club, owned and controlled by its members, on the south side of Pall Mall, London, Pall Mall in central London, England. As with all of London's original gentlemen's clubs, it had an all-male membership for ...
who accompanied
Napoleon
Napoleon Bonaparte (born Napoleone di Buonaparte; 15 August 1769 – 5 May 1821), later known by his regnal name Napoleon I, was a French general and statesman who rose to prominence during the French Revolution and led Military career ...
to
Saint Helena
Saint Helena (, ) is one of the three constituent parts of Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha, a remote British overseas territory.
Saint Helena is a volcanic and tropical island, located in the South Atlantic Ocean, some 1,874 km ...
and became his physician, having been surgeon on board when the emperor surrendered himself. He was a medical graduate of
Trinity College Dublin
Trinity College Dublin (), officially titled The College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity of Queen Elizabeth near Dublin, and legally incorporated as Trinity College, the University of Dublin (TCD), is the sole constituent college of the Unive ...
.
Life
O'Meara is remembered as the author of ''Napoleon in Exile, or A Voice From St. Helena'' (1822) a book which charged Sir
Hudson Lowe with mistreating the former emperor and created no small sensation on its appearance. Less known are his secret letters he sent clandestinely from Saint Helena to a clerk at the Admiralty in London. These letters shed a unique light on Napoleon's state of mind as a captive and the causes of his complaints against Lowe and the British government.
O'Meara was also the physician to have performed the very first medical operation on Napoleon: by extracting a
wisdom tooth
The third molar, commonly called wisdom tooth, is the most posterior of the three molars in each quadrant of the human dentition. The age at which wisdom teeth come through ( erupt) is variable, but this generally occurs between late teens a ...
in the autumn of 1817.
Legacy
O'Meara's granddaughter,
Kathleen O'Meara was a Catholic writer based in Paris.
[Flaherty, M. (1911). Kathleen O'Meara. In The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. Retrieved 6 December 2014 from New Advent: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11250b.htm]
O'Meara was portrayed by
Michael Williams in the 1972 Anglo-American historical drama film ''
Eagle in a Cage''.
See also
*
François Carlo Antommarchi, physician, 1780-1838
*
Dermod O'Meara, physician, c. 1614-42
*
Edmund O'Meara, physician, c. 1614-81
*
Kathleen O'Meara, writer, 1839-1888
Notes
References
* ''O'Meara, Barry Edward'', pp. 806–07, ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography 41 - Norbury - Osborn'',
Oxford
Oxford () is a City status in the United Kingdom, cathedral city and non-metropolitan district in Oxfordshire, England, of which it is the county town.
The city is home to the University of Oxford, the List of oldest universities in continuou ...
, 2004.
* ', Albert Benhamou, 2012, .
Irish surgeons
1786 births
1836 deaths
19th-century Irish medical doctors
Royal Navy officers
Irish officers in the Royal Navy
People from Blackrock, Dublin
Military personnel from County Dublin
Medical doctors from County Dublin
Alumni of Trinity College Dublin
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