Meara, Dermod O

, an Irish physician and poet, was born at Ormond, about the close of the sixteenth century, in the county of Tipperary, and educated at Oxford. Wood doubts this, because he could find no record of his matriculation or degrees; but in one of his writings he styles himself “lately a member of the university of Oxford,” and it is probable that he took his medical degrees there, as immediately on his leaving Oxford, he settled in his own country, and soon attained the highest eminence in his profession. He was living in 1620, but the time of his death is not specified in our authorities. He wrote a heroic poem, in Latin, on the earl of Ormond and Ossory, entitled “Ormonius, sive illust. herois et Domini D. Thomse Butler, &c. prosapia, &c.” printed at London in 1615, 8vo, % with an English version by William Roberts, Ulster king at arms. He wrote also some medical treatises, of which one only was published, on hereditary disorders, “Pathologia hereditaria generalis, &c.” Dublin, 1619, 12mo. It was afterwards reprinted with the works of his son Edmund Meara, London, 1665, and Amsterdam, 1666, 12mo. This son, a graduate of Oxford, practised both in Ireland and England, was a member of the college of physicians of London, and resided for some time at Bristol. He died about 1680, and had a short controversy with Dr. Lower, occasioned by Meara’s publishing an “Examen Diatribae Thomae Willisii, de Febribus,” London, 1665, 8vo. Lower answered it by a “Vindicatio Diatribae Willisii,” written with much controversial bitterness. ¹