The Effect
It is the late 18th century, and on the streets of Landau in the Prussian Empire, a suspicious-looking peasant is arrested, waffling away to himself in French. The man is thin, with an abnormally wide mouth and horrifically stained teeth, even by 18th century standards. He is clearly no oil painting, yet the man also seems to be afflicted with chronic flatulence, overwhelming body odour, breath so foul it could rot steel and almost constant diarrhea. In addition, his body is red-hot, and he is sweating profusely. But is he afflicted by some appalling disease? Or could there be some other reason why he is grubbing around the streets of Landau eating, quite literally, everything in sight?
Thinking the man’s appearance and behaviour fishy, in more ways than one, the residents of Landau alert the Prussian authorities, and the man is promptly arrested. A strip search of his body reveals nothing untoward, save a copious amount of loose skin hanging around his belly, in such a quantity that it could be wrapped around his waist like a belt. The Prussian authorities whip the man, in an effort to get him to explain what he is doing in Landau, but he reveals nothing. However, just twenty-four hours later, after a night in prison, the strange man relents and confesses everything to his captors. His name, he says, is Tarrare. He has swallowed a wooden box containing a highly classified message and has been sent to convey that message to a French colonel imprisoned nearby. The man claims he has been entrusted with this mission due to his superhuman capacity to eat anything put in front of him.
Sceptical at the unlikely story they’ve just heard, Tarrare’s captors chain him to a latrine and wait for nature to take its course. Finally, Tarrare squats and, with one noisy, messy bowel movement, expels an unnaturally square and wooden stool. The Prussians are amazed to discover it is indeed a box, but inside it is not the top-secret information they were expecting. The box contains nothing more than a dummy message. The French, it transpires, were testing Tarrare, to see if he could be trusted to conduct such a covert mission.
Furious by this turn of events, and probably also covered in excrement, the Prussian forces take Tarrare directly to the gallows, and place a noose around his scrawny neck.
But who was this peculiar character, found gobbling his way around the streets of Germany? Born in Lyon to a farming family, as a child Tarrare displayed an enormous appetite. So much so that, by his teenage years, he could reportedly eat half a bullock in one sitting. Unable to keep up with his abnormal eating habits, his parents kicked him out of the family home, forcing him to find shelter and work elsewhere.
With few options available to him, Tarrare joined a band of vagabonds and thieves, and began a tour of the French provinces begging for money and stealing food. His remarkable ability to eat vast quantities caught the eye of a travelling charlatan, who hired Tarrare as a warm-up act for his so-called ‘quackery’ tour. Tarrare’s job on the tour was to draw a crowd for the main event, by wolfing down a succession of items: from corks, stones and large animals, to entire basketfuls of apples. Not long into his new career as a sideshow act, Tarrare came to realise that he was drawing a bigger audience than the rest of the show put together, and so decided to move to Paris to become a street performer.
In Paris, Tarrare continued to pull in a huge crowd with his outrageous eating displays. However, one day his dining habits caught up with him and, whilst on stage, he suffered an acute intestinal obstruction and was carried to the nearest hospital. Here, he was treated with laxatives to clear the blockage. But instead of being grateful for the medical assistance on offer, he suggested to the doctor that he could prove how talented he was by swallowing the doctor’s watch and chain. The doctor, quite sensibly, responded by telling Tarrare that if he did, he would be forced to cut him open and fish them out.
During his time in the hospital, Tarrare, it was said, showed no signs of mental illness or ‘other unusual behaviours’, and was described by those who encountered him as ‘relatively normal, if a bit dull’, though he still suffered from chronic diarrhea, and the stench he constantly emitted cleared a room instantly. Furthermore, after eating he would display horribly bloodshot eyes and lurid red cheeks, and exude a visible vapour from his body.
After his stint as a street performer, Tarrare opted for a career change, joining the French army. It was at this time he was arrested in Prussia, and had a noose put around his neck. The Prussians didn’t go through with the execution, instead giving Tarrare a beating and releasing him near the French border. But Tarrare didn’t remain in the army for long before he was readmitted to hospital due to exhaustion. During this stay in hospital he was given quadruple rations, but continued to remain ravenously hungry. He would lurch along the wards, scavenging the scraps left by the other patients, and even sneak into the apothecary’s room to eat the poultices stored there. Mystified by Tarrare’s completely incredible behaviour, doctors at the hospital decreed that he should remain there in order for them to conduct further tests.
Tarrare underwent a series of experimental treatments, from doses of laudanum and other opiates to shots of wine vinegar, and meals of soft-boiled eggs. But all medical efforts were futile, and Tarrare continued to go in search of more and more things to eat. When doctors gave him a meal large enough to satisfy the hunger of fifteen labourers, Tarrare downed it in one sitting, along with plates of grease and salt, and four gallons of milk. His belly, loose and flapping when empty, inflated like a gigantic balloon.
Astonished by his ongoing appetite, doctors took it upon themselves to vary his diet even more. They gave Tarrare snakes and lizards, which he ate. Then they gave him a raw eel. This he took between his teeth, crushing its skull before swallowing the whole thing in one. Why Tarrare’s doctors next chose to present him with a live cat is anyone’s guess. But he tore into it, ripping the animal apart and drinking its blood, before swallowing the pieces of the unfortunate creature and expelling its skin and fur like an owl regurgitating a pellet.
But even this vile behaviour was not enough to satisfy Tarrare, who continued his rapacious rampage through the wards of the hospital. And it was here that his eating took an even darker turn, when he drank the blood of other patients, before creeping into the hospital mortuary to eat body parts from the corpses stored there. At this point, the doctors had had enough, and requested that he be evicted from the hospital and removed to a lunatic asylum. But one doctor, a Dr Percy, who had been his staunch supporter since admission, sprang to Tarrare’s defence, and so Tarrare stayed at the hospital.
However, shortly after the body-eating incident, something so shocking was to occur at the hospital that even Dr Percy was out of excuses. A fourteen month-old toddler went missing from one of the wards. And the prime suspect in the disappearance was none other… than Tarrare.
The Method
When a young child goes missing from the hospital where Tarrare has been entertaining medical professionals with his morbid and inhuman eating exploits, he is branded the prime suspect, and chased from the building. The toddler is never found.
Where Tarrare went after leaving the hospital has not been recorded. But four years later, he stumbles into another hospital, this time in Versailles, gravely ill. Recognising the odd individual now in their care, medical staff call in Dr Percy, the man who had previously treated Tarrare. Tarrare tells Dr Percy that he fears he is dying, that some years previously he swallowed a gold fork, a fork he now believes is stuck somewhere within his bowels. Dr Percy, however, is immediately certain: Tarrare is not suffering from a perforated bowel, but the later stages of tuberculosis.
Tarrare’s condition deteriorates, and his diarrhoea, though always appalling, worsens, as Tarrare expels geysers of blood and pus from his rear end as his life slips away. He dies soon afterwards, allegedly beginning to rot at an alarming rate.
The Chief Surgeon at Versailles, fascinated by the medical marvel now lying dead in his hospital, decides to conduct an autopsy. He discovers Tarrare possesses an unusually wide gullet and, when he tips back Tarrare’s expansive mouth, he is able to see directly into the man’s stomach. The stomach itself is not only covered with ulcers but abnormally distended, filling his entire abdominal cavity. Tararre’s liver and gallbladder are also freakishly large. Although the surgeon wants to continue his exploration of Tarrare’s body, by this point, and I quote: ‘The stench of the body was so insupportable that he could not carry out his investigation to any further extent.’
So just what might have been the cause of Tarrare’s insatiable appetite and compulsion to eat anything and everything he encountered?
Sufferers of polyphagia or hyperphagia have an incessant sensation of hunger, which does not diminish after eating, leading to a rapid intake of excessive quantities of food. Rather than being a disorder in itself, it is a symptom of an underlying medical condition. Could Tarrare have had polyphagia due to a host of other unrecognised physical disorders?
Might Tarrare have been suffering from an abnormality or malfunction of the hypothalamus, the part of the brain that regulates both body temperature and hunger? Or else an abnormal amygdala, which impairs decision-making. Could he have been stricken by a parasite such as a hookworm or roundworm? If so, then that would explain his weight loss, increased body temperature and abdominal pain. Given the fact Tarrare was eating body parts and live animals, though, perhaps the parasite in question had actually found its way into his brain.
Another possibility is the rare genetic condition Prader–Willi syndrome, which leads sufferers to constantly feel hungry. It can also cause mild to moderate intellectual impairment, behavioural problems, low body muscle mass, and tooth decay, due to overproduction of saliva. Could Tarrare’s behaviour, loose skin and rotten teeth have, therefore, been a product of this syndrome? It’s entirely conceivable, however, Prader-Willi syndrome also usually leads to obesity and other specific physical characteristics in the sufferer, such as a narrowing of the face either side of the eyes and a triangular, downturned mouth. None of which seem to have been recorded in relation to Tarrare.
Might Tarrare’s affliction have, in fact, been a combination of all of the above? As the location of his burial is unknown, it won’t be possible to investigate further, though there is one theory about the disease Tarrare may have been stricken with that is perhaps more compelling than the rest. That is that he suffered from a disorder called Pica. Most commonly observed in people with certain mental health conditions, especially autism spectrum disorder, intellectual disabilities or schizophrenia, Pica is the craving or consumption of objects that are not normally intended to be consumed. It is classified as an eating disorder, but can also be the result of an existing mental disorder, with an ingested or craved substance being biological, natural or manmade. Pica is thought to have a host of causes, from cultural or learned behaviours to negative conditions during childhood, mental health issues or various physical deficiencies. And it seems to be the condition that most closely fits with what we know about Tarrare.
Though it will probably never be possible to pinpoint the exact biological or psychological cause behind Tarrare’s behaviour, there was, strangely enough, a Polish soldier serving in the French army at the same time as Tarrare who was consuming ten times the rations of other men, apparently eating two hundred cats in a single year. He was also capable of consuming up to 500lbs of grass per day, considerably more than a modern dairy cow. There is even an anecdote from the soldier’s time serving at sea that describes him attempting to eat the severed leg of a crew member that had been blown from the man’s body by cannon fire. Could there have been some common environmental factor in France at that exact time in history that was turning people into perverse and compulsive eaters?
When Tarrare finally expired in a cloud of putrid gas, pus and excrement, he was twenty-six years of age. The gold fork he claimed to have swallowed years earlier was never found.
© 2025, Lora Jones. All rights reserved. Reproduction prohibited without written permission.
