Career
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 St. 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 Sir Hudson 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 in the Autumn of 1817. O'Meara's granddaughter, Kathleen O'Meara was a Catholic writer based in Paris. O'Meara was portrayed by Michael Williams in the film Eagle in a Cage.