Tarrare’s story starts in 1772 in Lyon, France where he was born to his humble parents. Like all growing boys, he had a growing appetite. Like all growing boys, he noticed changes in his body. By age 17 he was 100 pounds, putridly sweaty, with thin lips, bloodshot eyes, and a large gaping maw that would make a Boa Constrictor jealous. His stomach, when empty, could wrap around his waist like a self-deployable belt (how handy!). Although, he didn’t like to leave his stomach empty for long. As a child, he would eat his own body weight in beef, until it got to the point that Tarrare was gobbling up ¼ of a cow daily. How is that for an after-school snack?
Needless to say, Tarrare was an incredible medical oddity often overlooked by French history. To this day, it is unclear what medical affliction could’ve caused his uncontrollable hunger. It is theorized that an extreme form of hyperthyroidism could’ve been at play. This disease occurs when the thyroid gland located in the neck is overactive, producing too much thyroxine hormone. This drastically raises the body’s metabolism, making those affected eat more without losing weight, as well as show puffy eyes and excessive sweating.
Whatever was wrong with their son, Tarrare’s parents didn’t know. As Tarrare and his costly meals grew, his parents simply couldn’t keep up with the financial demands. Teenage Tarrrare was disowned and left to find his own next meal. He quickly fell in with some questionable characters. Despite their controversial lifestyle, this troop of sex workers and thieves was his new family. He would perform on the streets, showing off how powerful gluttony can really be. He would eat inanimate items, like stones and corks. He’d move up to tricks like devouring entire bags of apples and even live animals. The crowd couldn’t take their eyes off the disturbing spectacle. This was their first mistake, as the troop of thieves previously mentioned would swoop in to start pickpocketing the enamored crowd.
He moved on to perform as a side show for a snake oil salesman. He would devour any items offered by the stunned bystanders. As his stomach swelled up like a balloon, so did the crowds. This drew quite an audience to peddle to. Eventually, Tarrare would head off to start his own solo act.
During one of these solo acts in 1788, Tarrare finally had his first run in with the medical field. Something got caught in his digestive track. You probably don’t need a medical professionals’ input to know that isn’t good. Onlookers rushed him to the local hospital, where a hardy dosage of laxatives fixed the problem. Apparently, humans have always been great with laxatives. Our primordial ancestors basically crawled out of the mud and immediately got to work on expelling feces. Fun fact, cholera was treated with laxatives in the past. This is quite ironic, because the bacterial disease’s main symptom and cause of death is the dehydration from extreme cases of diarrhea. It was an inadequate treatment to say the least.
But for Tarrare, it did just the trick and he fully recovered. He even offered to eat the doctor’s pocket watch. The doctor responded that if Tarrare did eat his watch, he would simply use his scalpel to retrieve it.
There was a change on the horizon. Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity were at the front of everyone’s minds, and these ideas were revolutionary. The French revolution began in 1789 and Tarrare wanted to serve his patriotic duty. During his military service, it wasn’t the guns, death, and destruction that got to him. The biggest hurdle for Tarrare to overcome was the measly food rations assigned to the soldiers. He would do favors and hard jobs for the other soldiers in exchange for their rations. He scavenged for scraps and even started eating garbage. In an attempt to relieve his clear pain and fatigue, Tarrare was assigned quadruple rations. Still, this didn’t stop him from eating all the poultices from the medical supplies.
Finally, he was transferred to the hospital at Soultz with the diagnosis of extreme exhaustion. Although, this decision was probably made less for Tarrare’s health and more for the benefit of all the other military workers. They were probably pretty tired of dealing with him and his putrid sweats. If Tarrare was trash thrown out by the French military, he was gold to the surgeons now in charge of his care. Dr. Courville and Pierre-Francois Percy, the surgeon-in-chief, were his primary caretakers. The entire medical team was fascinated with Tarrare’s condition and had convinced themselves that there was great scientific growth to be found from it.
The doctors let him loose on a meal set for 15 laborers, and Tarrare ate the entire spread which included; two large meat pies, four gallons of milk, and finished with plates of grease and salt for dessert. Afterwards, he immediately fell asleep. This piqued the doctors’ curiosity. So, they took the only natural next step; they gave him a live cat. Tarrare ate the live cat. The doctors continued to offer him other live animals. He ate lizards, snakes, and puppies. He even swallowed an eel whole. Someone better call PETA! Apparently, Tarrare’s favorite animal snack was snake.
These doctors, despite not accomplishing any healing and appearing more like boys daring each other at a sleepover, are the reason why Tarrare’s story can be told in such detail. That is why this article is focused on Tarrare the French spy and not someone like Charles Domerz a Polish turncoat soldier who displayed similar symptoms. They took diligent notes in the name of science, preserving Tarrare’s legacy for future generations to marvel and puzzle over.
That being said, after seeing the terrible feats this sick man could accomplish, Dr. Courville immediately turned his attention on how to use Tarrare for war. To prove Dr. Courville’s hypothesis they had a meeting in the war room, surrounded by esteemed generals. Tarrare was handed a box. After he ate it successfully, he was rewarded 30 pounds of raw bull parts, which was also eaten. Then I guess all the generals waited awkwardly for a while wondering why they were wasting their time on a sideshow attraction. But eventually, the box was produced out of Tarrare’s other end, still containing a legible note! Dr. Courville argued that this talent could be used to sneak classified information across enemy lines undetected. (I, personally, would’ve just had him eat all the guns.)
That is how Tarrare became an official spy of the Army of Rhine. A spy who could eat anything. Everyone had been thoroughly convinced of Tarrare’s practical abilities, but there was one issue. He had a short temper, a brash personality, and by all accounts wasn’t considered smart. Either way, Tarrare was assigned a mission. Late in the night he crossed into Prussian boarders dressed as a German peasant. There is no record of exactly what Tarrare said, but I imagine it was something like, “Oui oui, I am German. Where are your baguettes?” Because he couldn’t speak a word of German and was immediately captured. (I said he was The Spy Who Ate Everything, not that he was a particularly good spy.)
He was searched and whipped but refused to reveal anything about his classified mission. There are two different accounts of the story from here. One says the officers became enraged when they finally retrieved the note from a not so fun digging adventure and discovered there wasn’t any classified information at all. Only a note revealing this was a test run of Tarrare’s capabilities. Another version states that after a 30 hour wait, Tarrare immediately re-ingested the box after it had revealed itself to his captors. Whatever the case, the Prussians weren’t happy. They held a mock execution, which is an oxymoron within itself. They took our hungry, sweaty hero onto the gallows with a noose around his neck. Then stood there for a second before removing the noose, giving Tarrare a beating and then sending him on his way.
After this expedition Tarrare returned to the doctors. He begged for them to find a cure for his unique disorder. He just wanted this never-ending hunger to stop. Finally, they started using actual medical treatments of the time to relieve Tarrare’s hunger. Opium, wine vinegar, and tobacco pills were all prescribed with no results. Next, Percy decided to feed Tarrare a ridiculous number of soft-boiled eggs to fully gage his appetite. This also failed, as Tarrare ate all the eggs prepared and was still hungry. It looked grim for Tarrare. Any attempted diet only made him more miserable, and he often went on the streets to eat trash and scraps from the butcher. Many doctors believed Tarrare simply had a mental disorder and should be admitted to an asylum, but Percy stood up for Tarrare and continued searching for a treatment.
However, it was incredibly difficult for Tarrare when he was placed on various diets, and he would stope to anything to try and stop his uncontrollable hunger. He was found drinking human blood collected from patients during bloodletting sessions. Later he was found in the hospital’s Morge, eating from the dead corpses. This all came to a head when a 14-month-old child went missing from the nursery. It was never proven that Tarrare ate the live child, but Percy could no longer defend Tarrare from all these accusations and he was chased from the hospital and dropped from the annals of history.
That is until he called for Percy while on his death bed in 1798. Tarrare was weak and bedridden, reaching out for any comfort from the man who had tried so hard to help him. Tarrare confides in Percy that he had eaten a golden fork two years before that had never expelled itself and was convinced this was the cause of his current state. Percy, on the other hand, recognized the late stages of tuberculosis taking hold. A month after calling on Percy, Tarrare died at the age of 26.
As in life, the doctors found him just as disgusting and fascinating in death. A team attempted an autopsy, searching for insight on Tarrare’s condition. He had an unusually wide mouth and gullet that revealed the inside cavity of the stomach when staring directly into his mouth. His stomach, gallbladder, and liver were all unusually oversized. (If that is truly what the organs were. Doctors of this time weren’t great at identifying organs. As it turns out Marry Shelly most likely had her husband’s liver, not his heart like most believes. ) The doctors didn’t get much further than this, because the cadaver was filled with foul pus. The golden fork was never retrieved.
Tarrare’s character rapidly shifts in the telling of his own life story. He was a man, sick and suffering like the average human couldn’t even imagine. Seeking anything to relive his never-ending hunger. Simply wanting relief from the torment of his own body. Yet, at times he seems like the furthest thing from human, like a monster sent to eat live animals, babies, and generally torment those trapped in his presence. But in the end, the real monster is the time that couldn’t accept him and the medical system that wouldn’t cure him.
References
Knapp, F. (2018, July 13). Whatever You Do, Don’t Tell the French About Tarrare. Messy Nessy Chic. https://www.messynessychic.com/2018/07/13/whatever-you-do-dont-tell-the-french-about-tarrare/
Lovejoy, B. (2015, July 27). Tarrare, the Greatest Glutton of All Time. Www.mentalfloss.com. https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/66508/tarrare-greatest-glutton-all-time
McElroy, S., & McElroy, J. (2017, February 9). The Man Who Ate Everything. Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine. Episode.
Not!, R. B. I. or. (2019, May 20). The Medical Mystery Of Tarrare, A Cannibalistic French Spy. Ripley’s Believe It or Not! https://www.ripleys.com/weird-news/tarrare/
Percy, P.-F. (1805). Résultats de recherche — Medica — BIU Santé, Paris. Www.biusante.parisdescartes.fr. https://www.biusante.parisdescartes.fr/histoire/medica/resultats/index.php?do=page&cote=90146x1805x09&p=97
Singh, P. (2020, May 8). The Dark Truth About Tarrare, The Man Who Couldn’t Stop Eating. Factinate. https://www.factinate.com/people/tarrare-facts/