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Polyphagia / Hyperphagia: Pathological Gluttony

He sounds like a man with an unbelievably fast metabolism. To eat so much and actually be underweight. Extraordinary.
He also sounds like a singularly unpleasant person to be near... ewwww.
 
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He sounds like a man with an unbelievably fast metabolism. To eat so much and actually be underweight. Extraordinary. ...

I was thinking it might be something more like the opposite - an unbelievable deficiency in nutrient uptake, forcing voracious eating to obtain what nutrients he could absorb. Tarrare was consistently described as being somewhat weak and lethargic. This makes me think he had to eat huge quantities just to keep his thin body going.
 
RE: Tarrare

It's also extraordinary that a Polish man of roughly the same age, and who also served in the French Army during the same conflict, exhibited the same sort of voracious gluttony. This second fellow was Charles Domery (aka Domerz):

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Domery

Domery's condition was supposedly shared among his siblings, all of whom survived smallpox. His affliction wasn't quite as 'eclectic' (i.e., bizarre) as Tarrare in choosing what he'd eat, and one of the few odd symptoms noted for Domery was profuse sweating similar to Tarrare's.

Save for what appear to be the sufficiently documented as totally distinct stories for these two fellows, one might suspect there were two legends concerning a single individual.
 
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Hyperphagia is a very common symptom displayed by people with chromosomal abnormality deletion/duplication syndromes, such as the well-known Prader-Willi syndrome (Chromosome 15 long arm deletions) and the lesser known chromosomal microdeletion syndromes which are now only coming to light with the price of full genomic testing coming down so much that they are being found and researched for the first time by national health systems.

I am a relative of three delightful young ladies who all have a newly-recognised microdeletion syndrome. Like many other 'rare' chromosomal conditions the elements of AS-like behaviours, neurological (epilepsies), feeding issues (poor feeding as infants and/or hyperphagia), learning difficulties and subtle facial characteristics are common expressions of the condition, all to a lesser or greater degree.

Previously abnormal overeating was thought to be a purely mental issue. Genetic testing is now finally revealing which genes are responsible for not having an eating 'off switch'. Of course coping mechanisms can be learned but the realisation that so many people were branded as lazy/mentally ill/greedy when really their brains could not tell their bodies they were full is very saddening in the extreme.
 
More notes on historical cases of polyphagia / hyperphagia can be found in a 2001 Fortean Times article.
The scholars of the past have supplied many more or less trustworthy accounts of the great eaters, or polyphagi, of olden times. According to the learned Vospicius, the Emperor Aurelius once amused himself by watching a peasant devouring in turn a roast sucking-pig, a roast sheep and a roast wild boar, all served with a generous supply of bread and wine; the man coped with this formidable task within one day’s time. In the year 1511, another gluttonous peasant performed before the court of the Emperor Maximilian: he ate a fatted calf raw, and started tearing a sheep’s carcass with his powerful jaws, before the courtiers interrupted this somewhat monotonous amusement, at the Emperor’s request. The Danish anatomist Caspar Bartholin once saw a student who could drink copious amounts of wine; at autopsy, the stomach of this individual was observed to be of enormous size. Helwigius claimed to have seen a man who could devour 90 lb (41kg) of food for his dinner, and Professor Martyn, of Cambridge University, had observed a boy who could consume 370 lb (168kg) of food in a week. A pig fattened on the boy’s vomit was sold at the market for a good price; probably its unusual diet was not disclosed to the unsuspecting buyer.

SOURCE:
The Cat Eaters
Jan Bondeson, October 2001
Adapted from Jan Bondeson’s The Two-Headed Boy (Cornell University Press, 2000).

Accessible Via The Wayback Machine:
https://web.archive.org/web/2008091...com/features/articles/260/the_cat_eaters.html

NOTE: My subsequent posts immediately below provide excerpts from this article.
 
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Bondeson also mentions the late 18th century Cat-eater of Windsor ...
We simply don’t know whether Lord Barrymore ever found a cat-eater to bail him out out a similar wager – that a live cat was to be eaten at a public house in Windsor – was certainly made in January 1790. One of the correspondents of the Sporting Magazine was there to witness the disgusting proceedings. A nine-pound cat had been selected as the victim, and “the Man-monster… made a formidable attack on the head of his antagonist and, with repeated bites, soon deprived it of existence.” He then devoured his prey without even stripping off the skin, leaving only the bones “as memorials of [..] the degradation of human nature.”

According to the Public Advertiser of 3 February 1790 the notorious Cat-eater of Windsor had later “given another proof of his brutality – an instance too ferocious and sanguinary, almost to admit of public representation.” At a public house – perhaps the same one where he had eaten the cat – he had suddenly grabbed a bill-hook and hacked off one of his hands. It seems his only reason was “his total disinclination for work” and a sudden idea that the parish would provide for him.

For many years thereafter, lurid newspaper stories about men eating live cats abounded. In 1820, the philanthropist Henry Crowe – an early champion of animal’s rights – held this up as one of the worst outrages of all in his book Zoophilos, arguing that anyone who could eat a live cat for the amusement of others would feel “no qualms or compunction at adding even cannibalism to murder.” In fact, the cat-eater of Windsor was just one of a long line of prodigious eaters who had munched their way across Britain and into medical literature.
 
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Then there's Bondeson's account of the Great Eater of Kent ...
In early 17th century England, a glutton named Nicholas Wood (right), who was known as ‘the Great Eater of Kent’, performed at many country fairs and festivals. Wood was a native of the village of Harrietsham, near Maidstone, in Kent and in his youth had been employed as a servant of a local gentleman. The rumour of his prodigious appetite soon became widespread, though, and he became a local hero. Once, when invited by Sir Warham St Leger to his Kentish seat at Leeds Castle, he won a bet by eating a dinner intended for eight people. Another local gentleman, Sir William Sedley, laid an even more magnificent table for the Great Eater; it was the first time this celebrated glutton had faced defeat. After a valiant effort, Wood fell to the floor in a death-like trance, his stomach distended like a huge balloon. Fearing that the glutton would die, Sedley’s servants laid him down near the fireplace, and smeared his belly with fat to make it more readily distensible; the insensible man was then carried up to bed, many spectators fearing for his life.

The following day, the Great Eater revived, but his fickle benefactor decided to mock the once famous performer. Sedley’s stewards dragged him outside, and he was put in the stocks to be jeered by the populace. At the castle of Lord Wotton in Boughton Malherbe, Nicholas Wood got his own back; he won a bet by eating seven dozen rabbits, and was again celebrated by his friends for using his unique talents to score off those above him in society. Wood’s greatest misfortune occurred at the market of Lenham, where a cunning trickster named John Dale had made a bet that he could fill the Great Eater’s belly at the price of a mere two shillings. He accomplished this feat by soaking 12 one-penny loaves of bread in six pots of very strong ale; Wood fell asleep, and remained insensible for nine hours, after finishing only half of this rather alcoholic meal.

In 1630, Wood met the poet John Taylor, who at a country inn in Kent saw him win a bet by devouring a breakfast consisting of a leg of mutton, sixty eggs, three large pies and an enormous black pudding. This was all the food in the inn’s larder, but the Great Eater was still hungry. The waiter ran out to fetch a large duck, which Wood tore to pieces and ate, leaving only the beak and quills. Taylor was deeply impressed by this exhibition and poetically envisaged that the duck, which had, a mere minute ago, been peacefully swimming in the pond of the tavern, now “swomme in the whirlepole or pond of his mawe.”

Taylor paid Wood 20 shillings to visit him in London some time later. In the meantime, the shrewd poet had come up with a cunning plan to cash in on his new acquaintance. Wood had never performed in London, and his gluttonous orgies would be a novelty even for the blasé citizens of the Metropolis. After a grandiose advertising campaign, the Great Eater was to make his bow to the London audience at the Bankside bear-garden. At the first show, he would wolf a wheelbarrow full of tripe and at the second devour “as many puddings as would reach over the Thames.” At the subsequent shows, he would eat a fat calf worth 20 shillings, and then 20 sets of sheeps’ innards. Initially, Wood felt disposed to accept this plan, hoping, perhaps, to become a super-star of gourmandising. His ‘agent’ wrote a pamphlet to celebrate “the Admirable Teeth and Stomachs Exploits of Nicholas Wood” which was widely distributed among curious Londoners.

Taylor spared no superlatives to describe his artist’s enormous powers of digestion. His intestinal tract was a stall for oxen, a sty for hogs, a park for deer, a warren for rabbits, a pond for fishes, a storehouse for apples, and a dairy for milk and honey. His jaws were a mill of perpetual motion, and his capacious stomach the “rendez-vous or meeting place for the Beasts of the Fields, the Fowles of the Ayre, and Fishes of the Sea.” But when the day of the grand opening was imminent, the Great Eater became increasingly worried: he suffered from stage-fright and remembered, with horror and apprehension, the many distasteful and dangerous practical jokes he had encountered during his long and perilous career. The embarrassing anæsthesia in Lenham had not been forgotten and, shortly before leaving for London, he had lost all his teeth but one at the market of Ashford, after being tricked into eating a shoulder of mutton, bones and all. And so, one day, Nicholas Wood fled his lodgings in London, never to be heard of again. John Taylor, his prize attraction vanished, had to content himself with writing a long complimentary poem to ‘the Great Eater of Kent’.
 
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Bondeson also mentions Charles Domery ...
While Britain produced some notable polyphagi, it was, ironically, the French – for all their reputation in matters of fine cuisine – who seem to have produced the most disgusting gourmands. ...

Another gallic glutton was Charles Domery, an ordinary soldier, captured in February 1799 on the French ship Hoche when it was taken by the Royal Navy off the coast of Ireland. He amazed his guards with his voracious appetite; still hungry after receiving double rations, he constantly begged food from other prisoners and did not refuse the dead cats and rats delivered to him as presents by the curious jailors. While at an army camp outside Paris, Domery had eaten 174 cats in the course of a year. Dogs and rats equally suffered from his merciless jaws, and he also ate four or five pounds of grass each day, if bread and meat was scarce. He liked meat raw better than cooked or boiled, and a raw bullock’s liver was his favourite dish. In spite of his gluttonous habits, Charles Domery was of normal build and stature; although he was completely illiterate, the prison doctors considered him to be at least of average intelligence.

In September 1799, Dr Johnston, the Commissioner of Sick and Wounded Seamen, decided to perform an experiment to test the Frenchman’s preternatural appetite for even the most disgusting pieces of meat. At four o’clock in the morning, Charles Domery breakfasted on four lb (1.8kg) of raw cow’s udder, and at half past nine, Dr Johnston and Admiral Child had prepared a suitable luncheon for him, consisting of five lb (2.3kg) of raw beef, twelve large tallow candles, and a bottle of porter. At one o’clock, the glutton again devoured five lb of raw beef, one lb of candles and three large bottles of porter. At five o’clock, he returned to the prison; it was recorded that he was of particularly good cheer after his great feast: he danced, smoked his pipe, and drank another bottle of porter. The following morning, he awoke at four o’clock, eager for his breakfast.
 
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Bondeson's comments on Domery's and Tarrare's mental health ...
Such unsavoury tales from the annals of polyphagy may seem hard to believe; but even they are surpassed by the exploits of the worst glutton of all time, a Frenchman known as Tarrare (see below). The story of Tarrare will raise a frisson of horror even in the most devoted student of the macabre: the bizarre antics of the French glutton are almost unbelievable, and one would at first be tempted to suspect that his biographer, Professor Percy, was guilty of exaggerating. This does not seem to be the case, however. George Didier, Baron Percy, was one of the leading military surgeons of his time; in his list of publications, the case report about Tarrare seems out of place among his surgical monographs. Tararre was widely famous among the Parisians, who delighted in the demented glutton’s macabre display of his powers of deglutition. It would even seem that a theatrical play was inspired by his singular career.

But the celebrated gluttons Tarrare and Charles Domery shared more than just their French nationality and had several characteristics in common. Neither, in spite of their singular behaviour, appeared insane to their contemporaries. Their bizarre eating habits began early – Domery’s at the age of 13, and Tarrare’s even earlier. Despite the quantity they swallowed, they were never known to vomit and did not gain in weight. Both had a preference for raw meat and could devour the most disgusting food with alacrity. Both Tarrare and Domery were observed to sweat profusely, particularly after a feast, and were continuously surrounded by nauseating body odour. At autopsy, it was noted that Tarrare’s habit of swallowing huge chunks of meat, apples and buns whole had caused a considerable widening of the gullet and stomach.

Several other historical polyphagi, like Jacques de Falaise (left) and Bijoux, showed distinct signs of mental illness even according to the criteria of their contemporaries. Others, like Thomas Eclin, were simple-minded individuals, forced to perform their disgusting and dangerous feats before the cruel populace. No case even moderately resembling Domery or Tarrare has been published in the annals of modern neurology, however, and it is thus impossible to determine their correct diagnosis.
 
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And finally, for his pièce de résistance Bondeson presents the life of Tarrare ...
In the unsavoury annals of polyphagy, the worst glutton of all time was the Frenchman known as Tarrare. It is not known if Tarrare was his real name or a nickname, but it has survived in such expressions as “Bom-bom tarare!” and “Tarrare bom-de-ay!” referring to powerful explosions or fanfares and, by inference Tarrare’s own prodigious flatulence.

Tarrare was born near Lyon and, as a child, was already noted for his enormous appetite. In his teens, he was turned out of the house by parents who could no longer feed him. For years, he wandered the French provinces in the company of robbers and whores and as an attention-getting act for an itinerant quack, swallowing stones, whole apples and live animals before the mountebank’s spiel about his wonder-drugs.

In 1788, he reached Paris, to earn a perilous living by means of similar performances in the streets of the French capital. During the revolutionary wars in France, Tarrare joined the army but was driven to desperation by his raging hunger. Exhausted, despite quadruple rations and habitual foraging among dustbins and gutters, he came to the attention of the military surgeons. Among their experiments, Tarrare was given a live cat, which he devoured after tearing its abdomen with his teeth and drinking its blood. He later vomited the fur and the skin. The doctors also fed him live puppies, snakes, lizards and other animals, and Tarrare refused nothing. Contrary to the imagined stereotype of a glutton, Tarrare was pale, thin and of medium height, and of apathetic temperament. His fair hair was uncommonly soft; his mouth enormously wide; and the enamel of the teeth much stained. He sweated profusely and was always surrounded by a malodorous stench which got even worse after his nauseating feasts. Professor Percy wrote that the methods utilized by “this filthy glutton” to make his rations last were too disgusting to be described in detail and “dogs and cats fled in terror at his aspect” as if they knew what fate he was preparing for them.

The French military were at a loss to know what to do with him until one doctor presented a bold, if preposterous, plan to General de Beauharnais. Dr Courville had persuaded Tarrare to swallow a wooden box with a document inside and recovered the box two days later from the hospital latrines. So Tarrare was officially employed as a courier-spy. His first mission was to take a document, internally, to a French colonel held captive by the Prussians in a fortress near Neustadt. Unfortunately, Tarrare, disguised as a German peasant, knew no German and he was arrested.

He managed to keep his secret while he was stripped and beaten, but after 24 (presumably, hungry) hours, he confessed and was chained to a bog-house until he delivered the message into their hands (so to speak). Fearing the worst, the French had sent a dummy message which was no use to the Prussians. He was beaten again before being released to make his way home.

Tarrare evaded further military service but ended up, nevertheless, in the military hospital under Professor Percy. Tormented by his appetite and the doctor’s bizarre attempts to cure him, he would stalk the dark back alleys of Paris where he fought street mongrels for the possession of disgusting carrion found in the gutters and refuse-heaps. Within the hospital, he sometimes skulked into the wards to drink the blood from patients being bled. Several times, he was kicked out of the morgue after taking liberties with the corpses. Eventually the inevitable scenario happened; a 14-month-old infant disappeared from a ward and Tarrare was blamed. The enraged doctors and porters chased him away and he was never seen at the hospital again.

Four years later, Professor Percy heard from the chief surgeon of the hospital in Versailles that Tarrare had been admitted to one of his wards. It was apparent to Professor Percy that Tarrare was badly ill, in the last stage of tuberculosis; he was struck by continuous, purulent diarrhoea, and died within a couple of days. The corpse putrefied uncommonly quickly, and even the surgeons of the hospital, who were used to dealing with rotting corpses, were unwilling to dissect him. At the autopsy, the rotting entrails were found to be bathed in pus; the liver very large; and the gall-bladder distended. The stomach was enormous, and filled the major part of the abdominal cavity. Tarrere’s gullet was uncommonly wide – probably from swallowing things whole – the surgeons could actually see a broad canal down to his stomach.
 
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A fascinating set of information...! Many thanks @EnolaGaia

(I am so glad to have had the chance to meet Jan Bondeson, and hear him lecture: a man who is every bit as interesting and extraordinary in person, as he is in print)
 
It is not known if Tarrare was his real name or a nickname, but it has survived in such expressions as “Bom-bom tarare!” and “Tarrare bom-de-ay!” referring to powerful explosions or fanfares and, by inference Tarrare’s own prodigious flatulence.

When I was about 9 a schoolmate sang a song to the tune of 'Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay’, thusly -

Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay
My father trumped today
He blew the house away
We've go no rent to pay!


It might have been a skipping game rhyme.

The song has an interesting history and isn't about flatulence but it does suggest ribaldry. A 1970s English skipping rhyme went:

Ta ra ra boom de ay
My knickers flew away
I found them yesterday
On the M6 motorway!


Pure poetry.
 
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