Categories
Oddities

Bom Bom Tarrare

Rob Macdougall writes about the miserable and disgusting life of Tarrare, an 18th century french man who would literally eat anything. He points to a longer article about the topic on Fortean Times called The Cat Eaters (yes, people who ate live cats), where I learned that Tarrare’s name survives in expressions like Bom-bom tarare referring to powerful explosions or fanfares and, by inference Tarrare’s own prodigious flatulence.

The idea of someone constantly hungry who is driven to eat anything is pretty horrifying, even before he gets experimented on by army doctors.