Polyphagism.-All the polyphagists whose wonderful deeds are recorded in history, are superseded by the famous Tarrare, who was known to all Paris, and who died at Versailles about twenty years since, at the age of twenty-six years.
M. le Baron Percy, who saw Tarrare, and who made some investigations respecting this singular personage, has given us the history of him, in a very curious memoir on Polyphagy : it is from this memoir that I shall extract the particulars I am about to relate of Tarrare. Tarrare has renewed amongst us the fable of Erysichthon, who, according to Ovid, devoured at one meal what might have sufficed for a whole city, or a whole nation.

--------quod urbibus esse,
Quodque satis poterat populo.

At seventeen years of age, Tarrare weighed only one hundred pounds, and was already able to eat, in twenty-four hours, a quarter of a bullock of that weight. Having left his parents when very young, (he was of the environs of Lyons,) sometimes begging, sometimes stealing, to obtain subsistence, he attached himself to one of the shows on our boulevards, where we see exhibit themselves, in turn, Gill, Harlequin, and Punchinello. One time, on the stage, he defied the public to satiate him, and ate in a few minutes a pannier-full of apples, furnished by one of the spectators ; he swallowed flints, corks, and all that was presented to him. At the commencement of the war Tarrare entered into a battalion ; he served all the young men in easy circumstances in the company, did all their jobs for them, and ate up the rations they left for him. Famine nevertheless gained upon him ; he fell sick, and was taken to the military hospital at Soultz. On the day of his entry he received a quadruple allowance ; he devoured the food refused by the other patients, and the scraps about the kitchen ; but his hunger could not thus be appeased. He got into the apothecary’s room, and ate there the poultices, and everything he could seize. “Let a person imagine,” says M. Percy, “all that domestic and wild animals, the most filthy and ravenous, are capable of devouring, and they may form some idea of the appetite, as well as of the wants, of Tarrare.” He would eat dogs and cats. One day, in the presence of the chief physician of the army, Dr. Lorence, he seized by the neck and paws a large living cat, tore open its belly with his teeth, sucked its blood, and devoured it, leaving no part of it but the bare skeleton : half an hour afterwards he threw up the hairs of the cat, just as birds of prey, and other carnivorous animals, do. Tarrare liked the flesh of serpents; he managed them familiarly, and ate alive the largest snakes (couleuvres) without leaving any part of them. He swallowed a large eel alive without chewing it, but we thought we perceived him crush its head between his teeth. He ate, in a few instants, the dinner prepared for fifteen German labourers: this repast was composed of four bowls of curdled milk, and two enormous hard puddings. After this the belly of Tarrare, commonly lank and wrinkled, was distended like a balloon : he went away, and slept until the next day, and was not incommoded by it. M. Comville, the surgeon-major of the hospital where Tarrare then was, made him swallow a wooden case, enclosing a sheet of white paper : he voided it the following day by the anus, and the paper was uninjured. The general-in-chief had him brought before him ; and, after having devoured in his presence nearly thirty pounds of raw liver and lights, Tarrare again swallowed the wooden case, in which was placed a letter to a French officer, who was a prisoner to the enemy. Tarrare set out, was taken, flogged, imprisoned ; voided the wooden case, which he had retained thirty hours, and had the address to swallow it again, to conceal the knowledge of its contents from the enemy. They tried to cure him of this insatiable hunger, by the use of acids, preparations of opium, and pills of tobacco ; but nothing diminished his appetite and his gluttony. He went about the slaughter-houses and bye-places, to dispute with dogs and wolves the most disgusting aliments. The servants of the hospital surprised him drinking the blood of patients who had been bled, and in the dead-room devouring the bodies. A child fourteen months old disappeared suddenly ; fearful suspicions fell on Tarrare ; they drove him from the hospital. M. Percy lost sight of him for four years: at the end of this time he saw Tarrare at the civil hospital at Versailles, where he was perishing in a tabid state. This disease had put a stop to his gluttonous appetite. He at length died in a state of consumption, and worn out by a purulent and fetid diarrhoea, which announced a general suppuration of the viscera of the abdominal cavity. His body, as soon as he was dead, became a prey to an horrible corruption. The entrails were putrefied, confounded together, and immersed in pus: the liver was excessively large, void of consistence, and in a putrescent state ; the gall-bladder was of considerable magnitude ; the stomach, in a lax state, and, having ulcerated patches dispersed about it, covered almost the whole of the abdominal region. The stench of the body was so insupportable, that M. Tessier, chief surgeon of the hospital, could not carry his investigation to any further extent.

Tarrare was of a middle-sized stature ; his habit of body was weak and slender ; he was not of a ferocious spirit ; his look was timid ; the little hair he had preserved, although very young, was very fair, and extremely fine. His cheeks were sallow, and furrowed by long and deep wrinkles : on distending them, he could hold in them as many as a dozen eggs or apples. His mouth was very large ; he had hardly any lips ; he had all his teeth, the molares were much worn away, and the colour of their enamel streaked like marble; the space between the jaws, when they were fully separated, measured about four inches : in this state, with the head inclined backwards, the mouth and oesophagus formed a rectilinear canal, into which a cylinder of a foot in circumference could be introduced without touching the palate. Tarrare, says M. Percy, was constantly covered with sweat, and from his body, always burning hot, a vapour arose, sensible to the sight, and still more so to the smell. He often stank to such a degree, that he could not be endured within the distance of twenty paces. He was subject to a flux from the bowels, and his dejections were fetid beyond all conception. When he had not eaten copiously within a short time, the skin of his belly would wrap almost around his body. When he was well satiated with food, the vapour from his body increased, his cheeks and his eyes became of a vivid red ; a brutal somnolence, and a sort of hebitude, came over him while he digested. He was in this state troubled with noisy belchings, and made, in moving his jaw, some motions like those of deglutition. M. Percy never saw in him any signs of rumination. The young Tarrare was almost devoid of force and of ideas. When he had eaten to a moderate extent, and his hunger only appeased, he was quick and active; he was heavy and sleepy only when he had eaten to excess.