Bottomless Stomach

Tarrare was a French showman in the late 18th century with an appetite that defied science. He could eat a quarter of a cow in a single day and still be hungry. He swallowed stones, live cats, corks, and baskets of apples. "The Bottomless Stomach" tells the gruesome and tragic true story of the man with the most extreme case of polyphagia (insatiable hunger) ever recorded. The book follows his life from being kicked out by his parents to becoming a street performer and eventually a spy for the French Revolutionary Army. Generals realized his unique talent: he could swallow a metal box containing secret documents, pass through enemy lines, and retrieve the box "naturally." But his hunger was a curse. In the military hospital, he was caught drinking blood from patients undergoing bloodletting and eating corpses from the morgue. When a 14-month-old toddler disappeared from the ward, Tarrare was chased out. This biography is a medical mystery and a horror story, exploring the autopsy results that revealed a stomach that filled his entire abdomen. It is a look at a human life consumed by a biological drive he could not control.