in france in 1772, an unusual baby was born, called tarrare. tarrare had an interesting affliction: he was hungry all the time, no matter how much he ate. eventually his parents threw him out because they couldn't feed him. he was terribly thin, had a mouth that stretched from ear to ear and blackened teeth, a high body temperature, and smelled terrible. his cheeks were wrinkled sacks that puffed out like a frog when he ate. before eating, the flesh of his belly was so loose that he could wrap it around himself like a belt, and it distended like a balloon when he ate enough to fill it - which was rarely.

for awhile, he made his way by performing, eating rocks and bushels of apples without chewing and even live cats and eels, drinking their blood and dropping them down his throat whole, plus offal from gutters, rats, and anything else he could find. he became a soldier, and ate so many rations that the army sent him to a hospital to find out what was wrong with him. to test his hunger, the doctors prepared food for 15 people. he ate it in one sitting, plus medical poultices, and sucked blood from people awaiting leeches. such was his hunger that they had to stop him from eating the dead in the morgue. he was finally thrown out when a 14-month-old baby went missing.

plot for a movie about a vampire or ghoul? an 'x files' script that never got made? no - a true story about a real man.

during tarrare's autopsy, they discovered that his stomach filled almost his entire torso, and that his gullet was as wide as his huge mouth. given the era, they were unable to tell whether it was illness or some mutation involving metabolism that caused his terrible hunger, but there were reports of one or two other people from his village that suffered the same affliction. as far as we know, it has not reappeared since.