Eat-up baby
Born in Lyon, France around 1772, Tarrare had a normal childhood. Tarrare had a very long grin that stretched across his face ear-to-ear. He was also very stocky and reportedly only weighed 100 pounds as a full grown adult. He had terribly stained teeth that appeared to be rotted and as he grew, so did his appetite. In fact, Tarrare didn’t have an appetite but rather an insatiable urge to keep eating. It’s reported that in his early years he could eat an entire horse the same weight as himself within 24 hours. He also had so much extra skin on his stomach that when he hasn’t eaten after a few hours he could stretch his loose stomach around his whole waist. However, after he finished eating the skin would balloon up into a massive gut
This monstrous hunger eventually lead him to being forced onto the streets by his parents who could no longer support his eating habits. This lead Tarrare to search for new ways to find food. He became a well-known street performer by challenging people on the street to satiate his hunger. Peasants would bring him barrels of apples and chunks of cows just to see this man eat it and not stop eating. The people were amazed and honestly it’s very surprising they didn’t think he was a demon or whatever but fascinating nonetheless.
After collapsing on stage while performing as an opener for a snake-oil salesman due to “intestinal blockage”, Tarrare found himself in the capable hands of a Dr. Pierre-François Percy, who ended up enlisting the strange Tarrare in the French Revolutionary Army.
Tarrare would do jobs for other soldiers in exchange for their rations. He even had double rations at this point and it still wasn’t enough as he decided to eat what trash he could find in the “dung-hill”.
The army eventually found a purpose for our man Tarrare. They tested him to see what limitations there were to what he could eat. They fed him snakes, cats, dogs, rabbits, owls, and an eel. All of those animals were alive when he ate them and drank their blood. They decided to feed him a wooden box that held a secret message inside of it. The idea was he would eat the box and go to an enemy prison in Germany were he would poop out the box and deliver the message to someone on the inside.
This may have been a good plan if perhaps Tarrare looked normal, wasn’t constantly eating, and if he spoke German. Unfortunately for him, he was discovered, beaten, tortured, and had a mock execution before being sent back to France. Tarrare returned to Dr. Percy’s care in the hospital where they fed him eggs and other supplements while he recovered. His story become less sympathetic when in a neighboring wing of the hospital a baby goes missing. Yes,you guessed it. Tarrare ate a LIVE baby. He ran from the law and disappeared into the city when they found out. Tarrare eventually died from late-stage Tuberculosis.