There are few pains more universal to the human condition than hunger. For most of us, however, a sandwich is never far away, and the slow horror of starvation remains a distant, abstract concept. But imagine a hunger so persistent it cannot be sated, no matter how much you consume. This sounds like a curse or a mythological punishment of Hades, but it was, in fact, the constant state of existence for a man named Tarrare.
Born around 1772 in Lyon to a poor farming family, Tarrare developed his unusual appetite at a very young age. He could consume seemingly impossible quantities of food without gaining any weight. By his teenage years, he was eating a quarter of a cow per day, nearly matching his own body weight. His feeding habits quickly became unsustainable, and his parents were forced to expel him from their home.
Tarrare then traveled the country with a group of thieves and prostitutes, stealing what he could to feed his hunger. Eventually, he teamed up with a traveling salesman, using his bizarre appetite as a sideshow act. He would draw a crowd by consuming handfuls of wine corks, rocks, or even live animals, with snake meat being his favorite. As part of his act, he was also known to eat an entire basket of apples in one sitting.
In 1788, he took his act to Paris, where he found enough success to sustain himself. Contemporary reports describe him as being of average height but extremely thin, weighing less than 100 pounds. His flesh was warm to the touch, and he sweated profusely, emitting a foul odor that could be smelled from 20 paces away. After eating, a pungent vapor would rise from his skin, and his stomach would distend like a balloon. Conversely, when he hadn’t eaten, the skin of his abdomen would hang loosely, stretched around his waist. His mouth was abnormally wide, his lips nonexistent, and his teeth were discolored and rotten. It was said he could hold more than a dozen eggs in his mouth at once.
In 1792, with the onset of the War of the First Coalition, Tarrare joined the French Revolutionary Army. His insatiable appetite soon proved to be a liability. A single soldier’s daily rations were far too little for him, and although he traded favors and spent his wages on extra food, it was never enough. He began scouring garbage piles, stealing scraps, and even eating rats and other vermin. Despite these efforts, he was eventually hospitalized due to extreme exhaustion.
His unique condition caught the attention of the regimental surgeon, Dr. Courville, who conducted several experiments to assess the extent of Tarrare’s abilities. In one, Courville gave him a live cat, which he tore apart with his teeth, drank its blood, and consumed whole, leaving only the bones. He also ate a meal prepared for 15 people by himself, demonstrating his extraordinary hunger to the medical staff.
No medical explanation was found for his condition, and psychological evaluations only noted that, aside from a general apathy and a “complete lack of force and ideas,” he appeared mentally normal. During his hospital stay, he was given four times the usual food ration, but it still wasn’t enough. He frequently bartered or stole extra food, and on several occasions, he was caught eating used bandages and medical waste.
With no cure in sight, he was discharged back to his unit. Dr. Courville then suggested to his commanding officer, General Beauharnais, that Tarrare’s peculiar talents be put to use as a secret courier. In a proof-of-concept test, a short message was placed in a small wooden box, which Tarrare swallowed. Two days later, the box was retrieved from his excrement, and the message was found to be legible.
Beauharnais arranged a demonstration for other high-ranking officers of the Army of the Rhine, where Tarrare consumed a wheelbarrow full of raw bull’s liver and lungs weighing over 30 pounds. The plan was approved, and Tarrare was given a box containing a secret message. His mission was to deliver it to a French colonel imprisoned by the Prussians at Neustadt. Disguised as a German peasant, he crossed the border under cover of night. Unfortunately, he spoke no German and immediately drew suspicion from the locals, who turned him over to the Prussian Army.
Tarrare did not break under captivity and refused to divulge the nature of his mission. However, when the box was discovered in his feces, he was revealed as a spy. The message inside was harmless—a simple request for the colonel to confirm receipt of the message, containing no sensitive information. Tarrare was beaten by the Prussians and eventually returned to the front lines. His insatiable appetite, coupled with his failure as a spy, made him an expensive and unsettling prisoner of war.
Shaken by this experience, Tarrare no longer wished to serve in the military. He persuaded his commanders to send him back to the hospital in hopes of finding a cure. There, he remained for several months, but his behavior became intolerable once again. Faced with insufficient food, he resorted to new lows. He was repeatedly reprimanded for drinking the blood of patients undergoing bloodletting and for attempting to eat bodies in the morgue. On several occasions, he sneaked out at night to forage through trash heaps or eat offal from butcher shops. Finally, when a 14-month-old child went missing, it was theorized that Tarrare had eaten the child, and he was expelled from the hospital.
Four years later, in 1798, Tarrare returned to the hospital, complaining of a blockage caused by a golden fork he had ingested. In reality, he was suffering from advanced tuberculosis and died shortly thereafter. Out of morbid curiosity, his physician, Dr. M. Tessier, performed an autopsy. His gullet was found to be extraordinarily large, and when his mouth was opened, Tessier could see all the way down to his massive stomach, which was covered in ulcers, abscesses, and pus. His liver and gallbladder were also abnormally large. Regrettably for Dr. Tessier, no golden fork was found during the procedure.
Jason Roberts is a Seattle-based author noted for his acclaimed western horror series The Dead Wind Trilogy as well as other works of cosmic horror infused with historical fiction. His web-based series, Dark Distractions examines paranormal mysteries, unexplained phenomena, and all things strange.
