But here's the thing, most of those issues you listed don't explain the gullet, esophagus. Mega-esophagus does. I've never HEARD it having been in humans, but even had a dog myself that had it. The esophagus is so large, it can't pull food down, and basically is part of the stomach, so the animal believes it's always hungry. They have extreme organ issues, such as in the liver and kidneys, and it causes them to not be able to absorb the enzymes they need naturally to be anything but emaciated. It's also worth noting that if not kept upright, the animal can't hold the food down, leading to vomiting (and drowning if they aren't treated). A human, however, walks upright so it would've been far easier. It's a cruel disease.
Fyi humans get mega esophagus. I have something similar, led to barrett's esophagus and crohn's disease. My father has it and can eat and consume some strange things with zero repercussions or pain, ever seen someone down a whopper with a gulp? I'd lay money on my father being the missing link on the evolutionary chart lol
@@mLnr-gz3jl lol glad to hear it mate. My grandpa was the exact same. Military man. He drove explosive ammo closer to the launchers because or course you don't want your stockpile getting hit everybody to bits. But when he got out until the time he died he literally never ran out of stories to tell. Always building, tinkering with things and would find scrap metal, or really any scrap he could find. Steel and aluminum piles cause they were less valuable and he'd restore all the parts and then custom build all 3 of us kids all bikes. So over in my life my grandpa has made over 10 bikes for us some were genuine antiques. They were awesome. Right before he died he found a stick growing from the tree where his mom died and it just so happens that it was perfectly shaped and very high quality wood to turn into a cane, he put gold studs around a slight spiral right where you would grip it making it actually more comfortable in your hands with a gold bucks head on top. of course he also treated the wood with he's homemade oil, and it came out to be the most beautiful and perfectly size games I've ever seen in my life and the craftsmanship was amazing. He was offered $10,000 for it but declined
What a miserable existence. I can't imagine the agony of feeling constantly like you're starving. It was obviously well past "hunger" for him. Poor, poor man.
@@tiredtears4177 Yeah, and he had constant diarrhea and intestinal blockage. He also didn't eat these things because he had a choice- like he was made to choose between a well cooked meal and rotten meat. If you look up documentaries on Prader-Willis, many of them will eat things like cat and dog turds because they become so uncontrollably hungry (mixed in with the developmental delay that comes with Prader-Willis). Plus a lot of the time, stories of him eating gross/inedible things are due to him making himself into sort of a "sideshow". So he was dependent on doing this for money.
I get a decent chuckle when I imagine Tarrare trying to be a discrete spy while devouring piles of garbage and chasing terrified animals like a ravenous, insane animal. I do admit it's quite sad as well.
The most bizzare thing is the story of him 'possibly' ate a baby... Also, thank you for covering Terrare's story! I've only heard his story from Sam O'nella's work and I'm so happy to see this videos!
As someone with an eating disorder I actually have nightmares about eating such bizarre things, believe it or not. A fascinating video- I’ve quickly become a big fan of this channel- and your beard!!
hey lovely, while I don’t know what type of ED you have or your experiences, I hope you’re doing good and taking care of yourself :) I’ve also struggled with eating disorders and I know how tough they can get. I wish you all the best
I commented this as a reply, but I thought it might be helpful for anyone is interested in Prader-Willi. Prader-Willi would be a normal conclusion to come to at first, but I think it would be unlikely due to the accounts of Tarrere outside of his eating habits. For one, few babies with Prader-Willi would have likely have survived in this time period as low muscle tone in infancy is the first symptom of PW. This means they have difficulty sucking and swallowing, so many often fail to thrive without medical help. Next, Prader-Willi has a few other symptoms besides insatiable appetite which include developmental disabilities and delays, and high aggression and other behavioral problems. In addition, those with Prader-Willi, despite their uncontrollable hunger, need less calories than the average person of the same age, so most sufferers are very overweight. Lastly, those with Prader-Willi will eat (and have eaten) themselves to death. They physically cannot stop themselves. I think Tarrere is certainly an unusual case, and I have no doubt there were problems with his brain chemistry, some of which included insatiable appetite like that of PW, and, after all, even starving people would be hard pressed to eat a live animal. However, I don't think what we know and define as Prader-Willi (a genetic and chromosomal disorder) was what Tarrere had.
i would say it sounds like Prader-Willi syndrome , which makes the person insatiably hungry and can lead to them eating bizarre items just to fill the void, but Prader-Willi also means it’s easier to gain weight, so most suffer with obesity as well. would love to know what made him so hot all the time ; i too am a very very warm person and sometimes it a little freaky!
He had diarrhea wich can explain why he never gained weight and the hight body heat it's high metabolism he might have suffered from hyperthyroidism maybe in addition to pws syndrome
It always amazes me that Tarrare and Domery lived on the same continent during the same time period, but as far as we know, they didn’t have a clue that the other existed! Another great video as always 👍
also , if he had stomach ulcers , that would’ve given him a burning , “hunger” type pain in his stomach that might’ve contributed towards him eating loads!
Or maybe a Hiatus Hernia in he's stomach, I have it and have constant hunger pains if I don't take my medication. I thought I had a stomach ulcer until i was diagnosed this year when a camera was put down my throat 😬
Eminem gained a lot of weight because he couldn’t stop eating. He said it was because the meds he was taking burned a hole in his stomach, so he had to constantly fill it up to ease some of the pain. Sounds awful.
I have to say I agree with this statement and came partially to this conclusion. I get stomach ulcers more often then I like because of unhealthy life choices. Of course they cause me pain but they make me awfully hungry. When I’m afflicted I don’t devour food like tarrare, but I do eat almost constantly throughout the day. I’d say I’m around 170 medium build, slightly underweight male for additional info
@@stephaniejones8609 But people with prader-willi syndrome aside from feelings hunger all the time, their bodies burn less calories than the average human . If he had said syndrome he should had been morbidly obese
I overate the other day and boy, did I regret it! 🤢 I nearly brought it all back up because of the uncomfortable and overwhelming fullness. 😵😟 If back then people were complaining of Mr.Tarrare's stench you'd better believe that had to have been some serious soul crushing odor!!! 🤭 Poor guy. Makes me very thankful for how far we've come medically.
Honestly it's so nice to see someone talk about Tarrare with empathy and humanity, because lord knows the man deserved it while he was alive. (Also, the man in the thumbnail is actually Charles Domrey, taken from an ad for one of his performances, fun fact!)
It’s incredible to see someone wrong about everything. No that’s not Domery. It’s Jacques de Falaise. I give my empathy ( or sympathy rather) to the puppies, cats , and baby he ate alive.
Ugh! Poor, poor man. What a ghastly life! Thank you for another story of someone we would never hear about otherwise. I will think of him every time I feel a hunger pang and eat a sandwich! Thanks again for the excellent content 😊😊
Not if you see a corpse, cat, puppy or baby? That would at least truly honor his deeds. Seriously though, I feel more sympathy for his victims. He had a difficult life and some severe conditions, but he clearly made others the victims of his story.
It must have been a combination of different things. Maybe there was a common parasite at the time that exaserbated the conditions, hence the Czech man also having a similar appetite. I wonder how many nutrients he actually absorbed? They should've analysed his feces. I've heard of Tarrare many times before but you still managed to bring up things that I hadn't heard of before. Great stuff!
I can't help but wonder about the evolutionary paths this type of appetite could have opened in the right conditions. His main tragedy seems only to be context. If he had been this way in some tribal context with a super abundance of food at hand it may well have become some kind of advantage. Deep sea life has evolved to gorge in this way for instance as a way to full exploit opportunities for eating. The hygiene issue is almost certainly contextual as well, if he had to dive to get his meals for instance I doubt there'd be any problems. He clearly needed energy dense food. His ability to safely eat bulk salt and drink blood is particularly fascinating. That will kill normal people. This guy is a fascinating anomaly.
I'm very glad that I managed to watch and listen to your story well before my next meal-time, as I felt like throwing up a few times during it. Thanks again, Paul, for your wonderful story-telling, and take care...;-)
Thank you for explaining the possible reasons why Tarrare was suffering! I looked it up midway through the video because I didn't think you'd go into it. I was very surprised and happy when you did! Everything you said lined up with what I read - and you even included some stuff I didn't see! Thank you so much for being so informative, as well as entertaining!
@@BethBurns68 Good point. There were some very obvious signs of unnecessary cruelty, but I think that might have been learned. People rewarded him for it, giving him more food to satiate his infinite hunger. I think there was something seriously wrong with him, but part of that was society rewarding him, the more f-ed up his actions became.
May sound silly, but it's like a sentient being trapped in the body of a zombie. A maddening drive to satiate a hunger that can never be satiated, cravings with no boundaries that eventually extend to flesh and blood. I wonder if after he consumed all that he sat there thinking, "Did I just eat/drink that?" or was he completely unbothered? Where was his mind at when he was drinking blood and nibbling on human flesh? I get the hunger could've been insane but he couldn't have possibly enjoyed eating ALL of that?
@@IttyBittyCavies I was going to say the same, "Enjoyment" probably wasn't even a factor with this man at some point. He was just hungry all the time. Some starving people would eat dirt I suppose in order to get something into their hurting stomach.
@@coffee-xg6mythey do. I cannot remember the country, but starvation is so bad that families will make "dirt cookies", blending small amounts of flour/sugar/fat with large amounts of mud and drying it out into flat cakes. barely counts as food, of course, but its palatable enough to eat and fills the stomach to ward off the feeling of starvation
My old house mate had an indescribable stench, it lingered in the nose and stained his room for over a year after he moved out, he also had a sweating problem
I have a friend that has half of Terrell's condition: my friend doesn't feel hungry all the time but they also can't feel full. This means they are actually in danger of eating themselves to death because they can't feel anything in their stomach.
The fact that Tarrare's gullet was so wide the doctor could see into his stomach says alot, yet he seemed to gloss over that. Especially since Tarrare wasn't a large man. What a sad life he had. Pictures didn't need to be shown, fyi. Especially the nasty animals. The words were more than sufficient. There are people who suffer today with pica and an insatiable appetite. I saw a documentary a few years ago about a young girl who suffered from an insatiable appetite (maybe pica, too). Her parents had to lock the kitchen and keep her locked inside the house. Very sad.
Two videos in and I LOVE your content sir. You have a fantastic narrator voice and a very calm cadence. The fascinating topics you seem to cover are very well researched and I look forward to watching more!
I don't know about anyone else but after hearing about him eating a baby, I sure wouldn't have wanted to be around him when he was hungry. And not because he of how he smelled. Would it really have been a stretch to imagine him cannibalizing a grown man or woman. if it's he truly ate a baby
Lipodystrophy and Prader-Willi Syndrome could be the cause of this fellow's condition. Although PWS does cause obesity so maybe not...Lipodystrophy is the body's inability to store fat which causes a person to always feel like they're starving, because they are actually starving.
Plus, if they don't eat regularly, they die. Because their bodies don't hold fat, they're only able to function as long as their most recent meal is circulating in their bloodstream. Constant starvation.
I absolutely love reading about very strange medical things and very strange history! Thank you, dear sir I just discovered your channel and I love your beautiful beard too!
The sad thing here is that he most likely suffered from a disorder called Prader-Willi Syndrome. Prader-Willi begins in childhood (as did this poor man), have poor muscle tone (with the possible ability to wrap his stomach around his abdomen?), distinct facial features (including a turned down mouth). The man would have suffered immeasurably and would likely have thought that his life was 'cursed.' Pica is caused by mineral deficiency which causes its sufferers to eat things that are *not* food. His body odour was a natural result of the types of non-food items he ate. And, if he *was* suffering from stomach ulcers, the bacteria (h. pylori) that causes ulcers create methane and other bad odours as a by-product. The resultant gastrointestinal fluids are also responsible for the breaking down of tooth enamel, which is probably why Tarrare's teeth were in such a bad state of decay. Tarrere probably hoped that his life would end, but the French were extremely devout Catholics, so suicide would not have been an option. Prader-Willi *does* cause immense weight gain, but in that century, tapeworms were very common, so that might have been why he could not gain any weight. These people should not be thought of as "disgusting, gluttonous or or grotesque." The condition is genetic and is anything but "disgusting," it's mostly sad, especially to have lived in the 17th century when the medicine they practiced was something akin to witchcraft. The poor fella never had a chance. 😢
I agree, I understand people had different standards for treating animals back them but eating a live animal is an obvious sign of mental illness I think
My brother has this high metabolism. He can eat and eat and never gains weight, and if you sit down where he was sitting, the seat will be extremely hot.
Omg I had read about this guy in a book a few years back, and never forgot about it! I would love to know what he medically suffered with. Tapeworms, pica and some mental issue is my guess. Lol
@@Mrs.TJTaylor oh yeah! I just looked it up. You are probably right! Then the tapeworm would have kept him skinny cause that syndrome often causes obesity. But good call on that disorder.
@@Mrs.TJTaylor I've watched a documentary about people with prader-wili syndrome and none of the cases involved a horrific smell or extreme heat eminating from the sufferers after eating
@@JaneDoe-rj4jn My money is also on liver and/or kidney disease (These poor organs cannot indefinitely keep up with saving the body from all that poison he was eating.). He was likely dying very slowly.
Meanwhile I'm 6'1 and can work a 12 hour shift on my feat without feeling hungry until the next day. It's a very vague ache that comes and goes and can be ignored for 2 days before worsening or new symptoms. Everyones different.
Where can I find a copy of Chief Surgeon M. Tesslier autopsy notes? What year was the Journal of Medicine published? Quite interesting in reading his notes. Can you please direct me to your source of information appreciate it, thank you. I already read somthing about him, but didn't know Tarrare condition and autopsy was documented.
Nowhere near that level, but my adopted son never seemed to feel "full". He was already eating solid food when we brought him home, and quickly realized that we couldn't rely on him showing cues of being full, we had to portion out what a typical meal size for a baby and toddler would be, and then cut him off. Once, my cousin's babysat him for an evening, we forgot to warn them, and they continued feeding him (because he seemed hungry) until the point that he vomited and then wanted more. He's 9 now and logically understands how much a child's stomache can fit, but his first reaction when he clearsbhis plate is always "Can I have more?" Until we ask him to take a deep breath, relax, and think about whether the amount of food we gave him was enough for a nine year old. He knows it is, but he definitely still feels the hunger, although it seems to have lessened over time. He's always been an amazing eater, he'll eat absolutely anything except swiss chard and eggplant. Mushrooms, olives, onions, brussel sprouts... you name it, he'll eat it.
One impressive eater that always comes to my mind is Michel Lotito, aka Monsieur Mangetout. This man ate, among others, 18 bicicles, 7 TV sets, a small plane and, of course, the award plaque he got from the Guinness Book of World Records in recognition of his strange eating habits.
Well, I'll be honest. I watched this after eating...a fish sandwich...but it wanted to make a 're-appearance. Was going to have a second sandwich, but this video cured me of that real quick! Will be returning if I ever feel like overeating again. Thank you :)
What i would like to know is how did he fall asleep if he was always hungry and if he ever tried to eat while he was asleep. I'm not a doctor but I feel like if he never tried eating his sheets or pillows while he slept it could be a further clue as to the cause of his condition. Fascinating (and at times gruesome and sad) story as ever! Thanks!
Prader willi syndrome is possible however it may have been coupled with an intestinal worm since if he’s eating rats or uncooked meat of the time. It would explain his eating and never feeling full, but also never gaining weight. Prader Willi sufferers have been known to eat almost anything to feel full; excrement (poop), rubbish, dog or cat food. So things like herbs or grass, or even objects may not be so unthinkable. It would also explain his internal injuries, if he’d maybe eaten some sort of toxic liquid.
Oh wow I've heard of this. Excited to watch this. I must say I can prob outdo Jughead Jones. Canada/US has the longest unprotected border in the world, and I've been kicked out of all you can eats on both sides from Vancouver to the great lakes :) I also pump out a massive amount of heat, I could melt snow to bone dry but this guy must have ate nasty things to smell bad. Did this guy have a lot of stamina too?
I went the, other way, I shrunk my stomach so that I was full with not much food. I lost 132 lbs, with exercise, and my late husband complained that I didn't eat enough, and would put more on my plate. I never gained back the weight I'd lost but I do eat somewhat more now, though not as much as an adult. I can eat 1/2 of a take out meal (Hamburger, fries) and be quite full, and finish it later in the day or the next day.
It sounds like Tarrare may have had Prader-Willi syndrome. Persons with Prader-Willi feel incessantly hungry no matter how much they eat. This can lead to a multitude of physical ailments and is often accompanied by bizarre behaviour, such as eating things that most people would find disgusting or inedible.
I enjoy listening to bizarre times in history. Also glad I stopped to check out your channel couple weeks ago. I enjoy your stories. 7:04 He probable ate poultice to treat aching, inflamed painful body parts.
I think he suffered an anomaly that maybe prevented his body from absorbing vitamins and also interfered with his hormonal response to food. Might even be the world's worst case of thyroid disease.
He probably had a mixture of hypothyroidism, worms (cause he ate random shit), and enlarged organs. All of that combined probably accounted for the extreme hunger.
I don’t think so. I have sever hypothyroidism (as do all the women on my maternal side, my father, and his mother). The hunger is not nearly this excessive. The tapeworm idea is something that I would think is likely, especially with the lack of sanitation.
