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1772 – 1798), sometimes spelt Tarar, was a French showman, soldier, and spy noted for his unusual appetite and eating habits.

Able to eat vast amounts of meat, he was constantly hungry. His parents could not provide for him and he was turned out of the family home as a teenager. He travelled around France in the company of a band of prostitutes and thieves before becoming the warm-up act for a travelling charlatan. In this act, he swallowed corks, stones, live animals, and a whole basketful of apples. At the start of the War of the First Coalition, Tarrare joined the French Revolutionary Army, where even quadrupling the standard military ration was unable to satisfy his large appetite. He ate any available food from gutters and rubbish heaps but his condition still deteriorated through hunger, and he was hospitalised due to exhaustion. He became the subject of a series of medical experiments to test his eating capacity, in which, among other things, he ate a meal intended for 15 people in a single sitting, ate live cats, snakes, lizards, and puppies, and swallowed eels whole without chewing. Despite his unusual diet, he was underweight and, except for his eating habits, showed no signs of mental illness other than what was described as an apathetic temperament. General Alexandre de Beauharnais decided to put Tarrare's abilities to military use, and employed him as a courier for the French army, with the intention that he would swallow documents, pass through enemy lines, and recover them from his stool once safely at his destination. The procedures failed, and doctors could not keep him on a controlled diet; he snuck out of the hospital to scavenge for offal in gutters, rubbish heaps and outside butchers' shops, and attempted to drink the blood of other patients in the hospital while they were bloodletting and to eat the corpses in the hospital's morgue.

As a child, Tarrare had a huge appetite and by his teens could eat a quarter of a bullock, weighing as much as Tarrare himself, in a single day.

While there are other documented cases of similar behaviour from the period, none of the subjects other than Tarrare were autopsied and there have been no modern documented cases resembling Tarrare.

On the outbreak of the War of the First Coalition, Tarrare joined the French Revolutionary Army. Military surgeons could not understand his appetite; Tarrare was ordered to remain in the military hospital to take part in physiological experiments designed by Dr Courville (surgeon to the 9th Hussar Regiment) and Pierre-François Percy, surgeon-in-chief of the hospital. A meal had been prepared for 15 labourers near the hospital's gates; although generally hospital staff restrained Tarrare in the presence of food, on this occasion, Courville allowed him to reach the table undisturbed. Following this, hospital staff offered Tarrare a variety of other animals including snakes, lizards and puppies, all of which were eaten; he also swallowed an entire eel without chewing, having first crushed its head with his teeth.

Following this incident, Tarrare was desperate to avoid further military service, and returned to the hospital, telling Percy that he would attempt any possible cure for his appetite. Other doctors believed that Tarrare was mentally ill and pressed for him to be transferred to a lunatic asylum, but Percy was keen to continue his experiments and Tarrare remained in the military hospital. After some time, a 14-month-old toddler disappeared from the hospital, and Tarrare was immediately suspected of having consumed the child due to his past behaviour of eating small animals. Percy was unable or unwilling to defend him, and the hospital staff chased Tarrare from the hospital, to which he never returned.

Tarrare told Percy that he had swallowed a golden fork two years earlier, which he believed was now lodged inside him and causing his current weakness.

Quick Facts

• At the start of the War of the First Coalition, Tarrare joined the French Revolutionary Army, where even quadrupling the standard military ration was unable to satisfy his large appetite.
• Other doctors believed that Tarrare was mentally ill and pressed for him to be transferred to a lunatic asylum, but Percy was keen to continue his experiments and Tarrare remained in the military hospital.
• In this act, he swallowed corks, stones, live animals, and a whole basketful of apples.
• He ate any available food from gutters and rubbish heaps but his condition still deteriorated through hunger, and he was hospitalised due to exhaustion.
• His parents could not provide for him and he was turned out of the family home as a teenager.

Source material: Wikipedia - "Tarrare". Adapted and summarized for DiscoverScroll. Original contributors are credited through the linked Wikipedia article. Read original on Wikipedia. CC BY-SA 4.0. Changes were made from the original.