The Man With an Insatiable Appetite
In late 18th-century France, a showman named Tarrare possessed an inexplicable medical condition that gave him an endless, voracious appetite. He could eat enough food to feed fifteen people in a single sitting, and reportedly consumed live cats, snakes, and even wooden corks without ever gaining weight.
From Rural Poverty to Parisian Showmanship
Born near Lyon around 1772, the man remembered only as Tarrare exhibited an appetite that alarmed his family from an early age. By his teenage years, his daily consumption had outpaced his impoverished parents' ability to feed him, and he was turned out of his family home. Left to fend for himself, he traveled the French countryside alongside a band of thieves and vagrants, begging for scraps, stealing food, and swallowing whatever refuse he could find.
Tarrare eventually arrived in Paris, where he turned his biological misfortune into a spectacle. Working as a warm-up act for a traveling charlatan, he drew crowds by devouring astonishing quantities of unusual objects. Spectators watched him swallow whole baskets of apples, flint stones, corks, and live animals including snakes and lizards. Despite consuming enough food to satisfy multiple grown men, he remained remarkably slight, weighing barely one hundred pounds in his late teens.
The Physiology of a Constant Hunger
Accounts recorded by contemporary medical observers describe Tarrare as being of average height, slender, and physically unremarkable at first glance. However, his anatomy revealed extraordinary peculiarities under close examination. His mouth was extraordinarily wide, with teeth heavily stained and lips so thin they barely concealed his teeth. His skin was loose and flaccid; when empty, the skin around his abdomen could be wrapped almost entirely around his waist, but after eating, his belly expanded like a balloon.
Tarrare lived in a state of extreme metabolic overdrive. His body constantly radiated heat, producing visible vapors and a foul, pervasive odor that observers reported could be smelled from twenty paces away. He sweated continuously and suffered from chronic, severe diarrhea. Following a massive meal, he did not retain excess calories or gain weight; instead, he would fall into a deep, comatose sleep, breathing heavily with bloodshot eyes before waking with his hunger completely renewed.