Owen O'shiel

He was the chief military surgeon of the Irish Catholic Confederation from 1642 to 1650, during which he was personal physician to military leader Owen Roe O'Neill.

Famously known as the "Eagle of Doctors" ("Iolar na nDochtúirí"), he gained renown for his extensive medical expertise and high level of education, becoming highly sought after among the Irish populace. A particularly staunch Catholic, O'Shiel died at the Battle of Scarrifholis.

The O'Shiels were a hereditary family of physicians initially in service to the McMahon family of Oriel, and later to the O'Neills. The Annals of the Four Masters reference the 1548 death of Murtagh O'Shiel, "the best physician of his age in the surrounding county".

Having been stripped of his family's lands in Brosna, County Kerry, patriarch James O'Shiel moved to Moycashel, County Westmeath, where his son Owen O'Shiel was born in 1584.

Around 1604, O'Shiel left Ireland to study in Paris. After attending university there for a few years, he decided to take his degree in Louvain instead, believing that the Parisian institutions gave out degrees too liberally. He spent three years in Louvain studying the teachings of celebrated doctors Vanderheyden, Van Garet and Vieringhen.

 

O'Shiel then moved to Padua, whose university he considered the most prestigious and sophisticated in Europe. He remained there for an entire year, "observing the chief practitioners and anatomists [and] attending the lectures of the first chirurgeons, apothecaries and herbalists." O'Shiel's reputation grew and he received the degree of doctor.

He then spent half a year in Rome conversing with the best expositors of Galen and Hippocrates.

In 1618, O'Shiel left Ireland for the Spanish Netherlands, where he was appointed as chirurgeon-doctor to the army of sovereigns Albert VII and Isabella. He also studied medicine at the University of Douai (which then belonged to the Spanish Netherlands) and remained at Douai for three years.

Feeling homesick, he attempted to return to Ireland circa 1621, but was detained at Dover. As a devout Catholic, he refused to take an oath of allegiance to Protestant James I. A contemporary record states that O'Shiel was dressed very shabbily and had little money (30s), but he was eventually released and made his way back to Ireland. He settled in Dublin.

Back in Ireland, O'Shiel cured a seriously ill woman who had been left for dead by many other doctors. Though her identity is unknown, it is apparent she was a person of great significance, as O'Shiel's services suddenly became highly in-demand by both fellow physicians and potential patients - particularly the Leinster nobility.

By 1631, O'Shiel had returned to the Spanish Netherlands and become the doctor to the Earl of Tyrone's regiment, a position he held for at least two years. In 1638, he was doctor to the regiment of Owen Roe O'Neill. O'Shiel may have been present at the Siege of Arras in 1640.

O'Shiel's extensive education was duly noted, and he was quickly nominated chief of the busy royal hospital in Mechelen, where he worked for twelve years.

When the Irish Rebellion began in October 1641, O'Shiel decided he would return to Ireland. He probably traveled with colonel Thomas Preston in September 1642.

O'Shiel served as Chief Doctor of Physic in the Leinster army alongside Preston until August 1646, where they had a falling out over Preston's alcoholism. Additionally, O'Shiel was persuaded to leave his post due to Preston's supposed apathy towards the Ormonde Peace and the Confederate Army's failures in Dublin.

He joined the Confederate Ulster army, reuniting with Owen Roe O'Neill, now a general, as his personal physician. O'Neill gave O'Shiel the castle of Woodstock upon gaining control of Athy, County Kildare. In 1648, O'Shiel's wife Catherine defended the castle against Preston, who threatened her nephew if she did not surrender.

O'Shiel was absent when O'Neill fell ill in Derry in August 1649. He was present at O'Neill's death outside Cloughoughter Castle in November 1649, and he remained with the Ulster army in the service of O'Neill's son Henry Roe.

Sometime after his return to Ireland, but before 1648, O'Shiel married Catherine Tyrrell, daughter of Anglo-Irish captain Richard Tyrrell and grand-daughter of Irish clan chief Rory O'More. They had many children.

 

On 21 June 1650, Owen O'Shiel was killed in the Battle of Scarrifholis near Letterkenny, where the Confederacy Army was defeated.