Edmund O'Meara was an Irish physiologist and one of the last prominent champions of the medical ideas of Galen. Son of Dermod O'Meara who was a physician, poet and author. O'Meara is remembered today for his criticism of vivisection, stating that the agony suffered by lab animals distorted the research results, using this as a basis to reject William Harvey's ideas about the circulatory system and defend the earlier theories of Galen.