The Man With the Bottomless Stomach: Did an 18th-Century Soldier Really Eat a Live Cat and Swallow Secret Messages?

Imagine a man who could eat a meal meant for 15 people in a single sitting and still be hungry. Imagine a soldier who was used as a secret agent because he could swallow a wooden box whole. Imagine a patient suspected of eating a toddler.

It sounds like the script of a grotesque horror movie or a dark fairy tale from the Brothers Grimm. But today’s story takes us to the streets of 18th-century France to meet a man named Tarrare.

Is this a twisted historical fact, or just a disgusting legend? Read the story, check your gut feeling, and cast your vote at the end.

The Boy with the Stretching Jaw

Born around 1772 near Lyon, France, Tarrare was… different. By the time he was a teenager, he could eat a quarter of a cow in a day. Despite this, he wasn’t fat. In fact, he was incredibly thin, weighing only about 100 pounds (45 kg).

But his body was a biological anomaly. He had an incredibly wide mouth with stained teeth. When he hadn’t eaten, his skin hung so loosely that he could wrap the skin of his stomach around his waist like a belt. But when he ate? His belly would balloon up like a massive balloon.

His parents, unable to afford his massive food intake, kicked him out. He roamed the country with a band of thieves and prostitutes, eventually becoming a street performer. His act? Swallowing corks, stones, and entire baskets of apples one by one.

The Spy Who Ate the Box

When the War of the First Coalition broke out, Tarrare joined the French Revolutionary Army. Naturally, the standard military ration wasn’t enough. He would do chores for other soldiers in exchange for their food and scavenge through dung heaps for scraps.

He eventually landed in a military hospital suffering from extreme exhaustion. The doctors were baffled. They ran experiments. In one, they watched him eat a live cat. He reportedly tore open its abdomen with his teeth, drank its blood, and ate the rest, leaving only the bones. He did the same with puppies and snakes.

General Alexandre de Beauharnais saw potential in this madness. He proposed a daring plan: Use Tarrare as a courier.

The General gave Tarrare a wooden box containing a secret message. Tarrare swallowed it. The plan was for him to cross enemy lines into Prussia, pass the box (yes, that way), and deliver the message to an imprisoned French colonel.

Tarrare crossed the border disguised as a peasant. However, he didn’t speak a word of German. He was captured almost immediately. After being whipped and tortured, he confessed. The Prussians chained him to a latrine and waited. When the box finally emerged, the Prussians were furious to find the message was just a test note asking if the delivery was successful.

The Final Horror

Tarrare was eventually released and returned to the hospital, begging for a cure for his hunger. Doctors tried everything—tobacco pills, wine vinegar, soft-boiled eggs. Nothing worked.

His hunger turned darker. He was caught drinking blood from patients undergoing bloodletting and was found trying to eat corpses in the hospital morgue.

The breaking point came when a 14-month-old toddler disappeared from the hospital ward. Tarrare was immediately suspected of eating the child. The hospital staff, horrified, chased him out.

Four years later, Tarrare reappeared at a hospital in Versailles, dying of tuberculosis. He told doctors he had swallowed a golden fork and that was killing him. He died shortly after.

The surgeons, overcoming their disgust at the smell, performed an autopsy. They found no golden fork. Instead, they found an impossibly wide esophagus that allowed them to see directly into his stomach without cutting. His liver and gallbladder were abnormally large, and his body was filled with pus.