Tarrare was an 18th-century French showman and soldier who could eat almost without limit and was "constantly hungry." As a performer, he "swallowed corks, stones, live animals, and a whole basketful of apples." In the French Revolutionary Army, "even quadrupling the standard military ration was unable to satisfy his large appetite."
Doctors studied him. In their tests, 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." A general tried to use him as a courier who would swallow documents and recover them from his stool behind enemy lines; on his first mission Tarrare was captured, beaten, and subjected to a mock execution. Back in the hospital, attempts to cure him failed. He "attempted to drink the blood of other patients" and "to eat the corpses in the hospital's morgue," and after he was "suspected of eating a one-year-old toddler," he was thrown out. He died of tuberculosis around 1798.
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