Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 42.djvu/177

 O'MAOLMHUAIDH, FRANCIS (fl. 1660), theologian and grammarian. [See .]

O'MEARA, BARRY EDWARD (1786–1836), surgeon to Napoleon I, born in Ireland in 1786, was the son of Jeremiah O'Meara, a 'member of the legal profession,' by Miss Murphy, sister of Edmund Murphy, M.A., of Trinity College, Dublin, and rector of Tartaraghan, co. Armagh. He is supposed to have been a descendant of the Irish medical family, of which [q. v.] was a member (cf., Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, p. 6). The statement has been repeated that he was educated at Trinity College, and at the Royal College of Surgeons, in Dublin; but his name is not borne upon the registers of either society, and it is more probable that he studied surgery in London. He entered the army in 804 as assistant-surgeon to the 62nd regiment, served with it in Sicily and Calabria, and in General Fraser's expedition to Egypt in 1807, and was senior medical officer to the troops which held the fortress of Scylla. After the conclusion of the expedition of 1807, he was second in a bloodless duel at Messina in Sicily between two military officers, one of whom was O'Meara's old schoolfellow; and owing to the intervention of Lieutenant-colonel Sir John Stuart, who was resolved to suppress the practice of duelling, O'Meara and his principal, who was the challenger, were both ordered to leave the service. Subsequently O'Meara became assistant-surgeon on board H.M.S. Victorious (Captain Sir John Talbot), and later was surgeon successively on board the Espiègle, the Goliath, and the Bellerophon when it received Napoleon in 1816. In both the Goliath and the Bellerophon he served under Captain Maitland [see ], who spoke highly of him. During the passage from Rochefort to Plymouth Bonaparte was attracted by his power of speaking Italian, and, when his own surgeon, Mengeaud, declined to follow him into exile, he asked that O'Meara should be allowed to accompany him to St. Helena as his medical attendant. The admiralty readily permitted him to join the emperor. Napoleon seems to have felt little confidence in his medical skill, but treated him with greater friendliness than was agreeable to Montholon, Las Cases, and other members of his suite.

O'Meara had foreseen that his position might become delicate and difficult. Lowe wished him to act to some extent as a spy upon his prisoner, and to repeat to him the private conversations of the emperor. He recommended that O'Meara's stipend should be raised from 366l. to 520l. per annum, and for some time their relations were cordial. But Lowe soon detected O'Meara in several irregularities, for which he reprimanded him with asperity. O'Meara retaliated by withholding his reports of Napoleon's conversations. The breach rapidly widened, and O'Meara lent himself with increasing readiness to Napoleon's policy of exasperation. Lowe asked the government to recall O'Meara. Lord Bathurst at first declined, but in May 1818 evidence of O'Meara's intrigues reached him from a source other than the governor's despatches, and in July O'Meara was dismissed from his post. He carried with him from the island an autograph note from Napoleon, dated 25 July 1818, which ran: 'Je prie mes parens et mes amis de croire tout ce que le docteur O'Meara leur dira relativement à la position où je me trouve et aux sentimens que je conserve. S'il voit ma bonne Louise, je la prie de permettre qu'il lui baise la main.' Upon his arrival in England he despatched, on 28 Oct. 1818, a letter to the admiralty, insinuating that Napoleon's life was not safe in Lowe's hands. The admiralty, by way of reply, informed O'Meara on 2 Nov. that his name had been erased from the list of naval surgeons. There seems no doubt that his conduct throughout was that of an indiscreet partisan, or rather puppet, of Napoleon; and his diagnosis of his patient's case as one of liver disease induced by the malignity of the climate was falsified by Napoleon's subsequent death from a disease which is not affected by climate (, Napoleon's Last Illness).

O'Meara's attitude rendered him extremely popular with a large party in England, and Byron, in his 'Age of Bronze,' thus mentioned the incident of his dismissal:

O'Meara subsequently attached himself to the opposition, and espoused the cause of Queen Caroline. Moore the poet, writing in 1820 in his 'Journal,' says that O^Meara devoted himself to the queen's business, and collected her witnesses, &c., at her trial. He also became an active member of the Reform Club, joining the first committee in 1836, and was a warm adherent of Daniel O'Connell.

O'Meara had commenced a pamphlet war against his enemy Lowe by the anonymous publication in 1817 of 'Letters from the Cape of Good Hope,' of which a French version appeared two years later. This was written in reply to Dr. William Warden's 'Letters written on board the Northumberland and