Despite his unusual diet, he was underweight and, with the exception of his eating habits, he showed no signs of mental illness other than what was described as an apathetic temperament. He was hospitalised due to exhaustion and became the subject of a series of medical experiments to test his eating capacity, in which, among other things, he ate a meal intended for 15 people in a single sitting, ate live cats, snakes, lizards, and puppies, and swallowed eels whole without chewing. He ate any available food from gutters and rubbish heaps but his condition still deteriorated through hunger. He then took this act to Paris where he worked as a street performer.Īt the start of the War of the First Coalition, Tarrare joined the French Revolutionary Army, where even quadrupling the standard military ration was unable to satisfy his large appetite. In this act, he swallowed corks, stones, live animals, and a whole basketful of apples. He travelled France in the company of a band of sex workers and thieves before becoming the warm-up act for a travelling charlatan. Able to eat vast amounts of meat, he was constantly hungry his parents could not provide for him and he was turned out of the family home as a teenager. Tarrare ( c. 1772 – 1798), sometimes spelled Tarar, was a French showman and soldier noted for his unusual appetite and eating habits. Doctor Pierre-François Percy's original paper on Tarrare's medical history, Mémoire sur la polyphagie (1805)
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