He could devour his entire body weight worth of beef in a single day, and still be hungry.
Nobody remembers what Tarrares real name was, but everybody called him Tarrare.
Der Voller by Georg Emmanuel Opiz.
Tarrare was born near Lyon in 1772.
He would eat ravenously and was said to be particularly fond of snake meat.
In 1788, he moved to Paris to work as a street performer doing similar stunts.
This experience might have stirred another person to give up such a perilous career, but not Tarrare.
After the War of the First Coalition broke out, Tarrare signed up with the French Revolutionary Army.
Unfortunately for him, military rations were not enough to satisfy his appetite.
The militarys frugal diet left him with extreme exhaustion and he was admitted to a hospital.
The doctors quadrupled his ration, but still he remained hungry.
On another occasion, he was presented a live cat.
He also ate a variety of other animals including snakes, lizards and puppies.
He also swallowed an entire eel without chewing, having first crushed its head with his teeth.
Despite his voracious appetite, Tarrare never seemed to put on weight.
He was of slim build and of average height.
During his teens, he weighed only 100 pounds.
But after having eaten a hearty meal, his paunch could distend in a remarkable manner.
After a few months in the hospital, the military board inquired how soon Tarrare might return to duty.
Tarrare was asked to swallow a wooden box with a document inside.
His first task was to deliver a message to a French colonel held prisoner in a Prussian fortress.
As the general suspected, Tarrare was captured outside the city of Landau.
When the Prussians read the message they were furious because they expected something far more important.
Terrified by the ordeal, Tarrare returned to the hospital and begged Dr. Percy to cure him.
But when a 14-month-old child mysteriously disappeared, Tarrare became an immediate suspect.
Four years later, in 1798, Tarrare showed up at a hospital in Versailles.
Percy went to see him and found him weak and bedridden.
A month later, Tarrae was struck with terrible diarrhea.
He died a few days later.
The corpse rotted pretty quickly, and the surgeons of the hospital were loathe to perform a dissection.
However, the chief surgeon at the Versailles hospital overcame his disgust and opened up the cadaver.
He found Tarrare’s gullet to be abnormally wide and it filled the major part of the abdominal cavity.
When his jaws were forced opened, surgeons could see down a broad canal into the stomach.
No golden fork was found.
The cause of Tarrares extreme gluttony was never diagnosed.
He may have been suffering from hyperthyroidism or some sort of endocrine disease.
Tarrare wasnt the only such case in history.
He liked putrid meat from a fly-blown cadaver better than a fresh beef steak.
Bondeson also speaks of one Charles Domery, a French soldier, who had an equally voracious appetite.
