A doctor in the 18th century must have been stunned. He was no quack, but a man of science accustomed to the strange workings of the human body—and even he was at a loss. Before him sat a patient with a distended stomach, a gaze often lost in a hunger that seemed to consume everything, and a reputation that preceded him: Tarrare, the man who could literally eat anything. And “anything” is no metaphor. We are talking about live cats, snakes, huge baskets of fruit in minutes and, yes, stones. It is hard to believe, isn’t it?
Tarrare’s story is one of those biological anomalies so extreme they sound like legend—yet, to our surprise and horror, the case was recorded as real. It forces us to ask what the human body can endure and, more unsettlingly, what it can crave. Was it an illness? A curse? Doctors with the limited knowledge of their time wrestled with the mystery.
Before we get into the most disturbing episodes, here is a direct visual introduction to his life—a difficult story to stomach.
The birth of a monstrous appetite
Born around 1772 on a modest farm near Lyon, France, Tarrare’s childhood was anything but ordinary. From an early age, his appetite was so voracious that his parents could not feed him. Accounts say that by age 17 he could eat his own weight in meat every day. This was not greed or a whim; it was a brutal physical need that consumed him. His impoverished, desperate family eventually had no choice but to turn him out. Imagine the anguish of parents whose child is never satisfied, no matter how much he eats.
Left to fend for himself, Tarrare joined a troupe of street performers. His act was simple, shocking and disturbing: eating. For the audience, it was a grotesque spectacle. For him, it was a way to survive. In front of the crowd, he swallowed without hesitation:
- Whole baskets of apples
- Corks
- Stones
- Live animals, including cats and snakes
His capacity was so incredible that on one occasion he swallowed a basket full of fruit along with the basket itself. It is easy to think it was a trick, but the reality was far more visceral—and far less entertaining.
From sideshow attraction to chronically hungry soldier
When the French Revolution broke out, Tarrare, like many young men, joined the army. What could go wrong? Almost everything. The trouble started on day one. Military rations were scarce for most soldiers, but to Tarrare they were a joke. He ate his share in seconds, then went after his comrades’ food. Punishment did little; his hunger was a crueler master than any sergeant. Exhausted, he was taken to the military hospital at Soultz, because even the leftovers from the entire camp could not satisfy him.
There, military doctors studied him with a mix of fascination and horror. The chief surgeon, Dr. Courville, and the celebrated Dr. Percy were captivated by the unprecedented case. They wanted to understand the cause of his condition and tried feeding him everything they could imagine:
- Rations meant for a dozen men
- Raw meat
- Live animals—including a whole cat, which he later “vomited,” after chewing and swallowing it
- A 33-pound dish of bull lungs and liver, which he ate in one sitting
Despite these monstrous meals, Tarrare never gained weight. He remained thin, almost skeletal, with loose skin and a sickly appearance. Most striking was his breath: so foul and overpowering that, according to accounts, it could be detected from several yards away. After eating, his abdomen ballooned, only to return to normal a short time later. He was a walking medical mystery.
The secret experiment: Tarrare as a messenger
Amid this food-fueled chaos came an idea almost as outrageous as Tarrare himself. General Alexandre de Beauharnais was impressed by his ability to swallow objects and later retrieve them. He thought Tarrare might make the perfect messenger. A small wooden box with a secret note inside was given to him to swallow. If he were captured, the thinking went, he could recover the box later. The experiment worked, though not without complications: Tarrare swallowed the box and passed it intact the next day.
He was sent on a mission behind enemy lines in Prussia. His lack of military skill, unusual gait and disheveled appearance quickly gave him away. He was captured, beaten and subjected to a brutal mock execution that nearly killed him. The Prussians eventually released him, but not before trying to find out whether he had swallowed anything important. Tarrare recovered the box, but the experience traumatized him, and he swore never to serve as a messenger again.
The dark side of insatiable hunger
Back at the military hospital, Tarrare begged the doctors to cure his unbearable appetite. They tried diets, laxatives and even vinegar treatments, but nothing worked. His hunger drove him to increasingly dark places. He began searching for food anywhere he could:
- In the hospital trash
- Among discarded offal
- He was said to drink blood from patients who had been bled
- He even tried to eat corpses in the morgue
The turning point that sealed his fate at the hospital was almost indescribably horrific. A 14-month-old baby mysteriously disappeared. There was no direct evidence, but suspicion fell on Tarrare. He was expelled immediately; his monstrous reputation had become more troubling than his potential value to medical science. It is the most chilling episode in his story, a reminder that desperation and an uncontrollable condition can lead into humanity’s darkest corners.
The inevitable end and the autopsy
After his expulsion, Tarrare disappeared from the records for four years. He reappeared at the hospital in Versailles in 1798, gravely ill. He suffered from severe diarrhea and died that year. Surgeon Pierre-François Percy documented the case and described an autopsy that found an unusually dilated esophagus and an abnormal stomach, but could not explain the source of Tarrare’s extreme hunger. His story remains one of the most bewildering medical observations of the late 18th century.