Tarrare

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Imagine if you couldn’t stop eating, no matter how much you ate. You never felt full. You would eat anything. People would call you a monster. But that wouldn’t be all of it. Meet TARRARE.

Tarrare was a nickname, perhaps derived from the French for ‘explosion’—why will become apparent later. He was born around 1772 and was constantly hungry, leading to him being turned out of his family home as a teenager. By this point, he could eat his own body-weight in food.

This attracted the attention of his commanding officers. Wanting to see what he was capable of, they sat him in front of a meal meant for 15 people. He ate it all, then fell asleep. Another time, he ripped a live cat apart and drank its blood. He ate eels without chewing them.

The brass thought he’d make a good spy. He’d eat a box of documents and pass it in his stool later. But he wasn’t bright and didn’t speak German, so he was soon rumbled by the Prussians. After extensive torture, he revealed his scheme. The Prussians chained him to a latrine.

The Prussians were furious when they got their hands on the box — it was a dummy message. They performed a mock execution on Tarrare, beat him some more, then let him go. Suffice it to say, Tarrare did not wish to be a soldier anymore.

‘Salvation’ arrived in the form of Drs Courville and Percy. Tarrare was desperate for a cure, so they vowed to get to the bottom of it. Their attempts to keep him to a fixed diet never worked. He would break out of the hospital and fight stray dogs for offal.

He also tried to drink the blood of bloodletting patients and eat corpses in the hospital morgue. After some time, a toddler disappeared from the hospital. Tarrare was immediately suspected. He was chased from the hospital by its staff, never to return.

Four years later, Dr Percy was contacted: Tarrare had reappeared. He was now extremely weak, suffering from acute tuberculosis. He died shortly after, following continuous exudative diarrhoea. His corpse rotted quickly.

There was a quick autopsy. It revealed a massive stomach, lined with ulcers, at the bottom of an abnormally wide gullet. His body was full of pus.

There are no extant images of Tarrare. Contemporary accounts describe him as thin and fair-haired. His cheeks were loose and flapped about his face; he was able to fit huge quantities of food inside his mouth. The skin about his middle was so loose he could tie it around himself

When he ate, his belly would distend like that of a full-term pregnant woman. His stench was described in vivid detail: he stank “to such a degree that he could not be endured within the distance of twenty paces.” Visible vapour would rise from him, so great was his stench.

So, why do I tell you about Tarrare? A big part of it is his mysteriousness: we do not know what caused his condition, though there are several possible answers. He did not present as mentally ill; only as having an apathetic temperament with "a complete lack of force and ideas"

He is one of many lost to time, known only by their difference. I want to write about him in a way that will look beyond the seeming horror of his life. Maybe you’d like to try, too?