Talk:Tarrare

Note regarding referencing

As this contains a lot of rather outlandish-sounding claims, it's referenced far more heavily than usual, and citations are immediately next to the point being referenced, rather than at the ends of sentences/paragraphs. – iridescent 10:32, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

• The numbers (like eating his own weight of food a day) sound like another Mary Toft. Are there any modern evaluations if such gluttony is physically possible? Can a digestive system actually move food so quickly and relentlessly? East of Borschov (talk) 18:33, 4 June 2010 (UTC)
  • What you believe or don't believe is immaterial. Wikipedia is a tertiary source, and thus we report what the sources say. In this case, they're unequivocal.[1][2] – iridescent 18:39, 4 June 2010 (UTC)
    • You jump to conclusions on other people's beliefs too early. After reading the article I struggle to make myself believe that my doctors did not borrow their unequivocal wisdom from the 1819 journals :)) East of Borschov (talk) 18:51, 4 June 2010 (UTC)
      • Not clear what point you're trying to make. I'm quite sure that they're all drawing from Percy's 1819 paper. I'm also aware that Percy was one of the leading surgeons in the French military and a leading writer in French medicine, and is impeccable as a source. – iridescent 18:54, 4 June 2010 (UTC)
        • There is no possible way to eat your own weight in a day. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.75.60.151 (talk) 15:53, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

Quite possibly, but it's a direct quote from a reputable scientific journal, written by the only scientist to study him while he was alive, who had nothing to gain by lying or exaggerating. The exact text is "Il n'avait alors que 17 ans, et je lui a oui dire qui, pesant seulement cent livres (50 kilogrammes) , il etait deja, a cet age, en etat de manger, en 24 heures, un quartier de boeuf de ce poids" ("At the age of 17 and weighing only 100 livres (50 kg), he was eating, in 24 hours, a quarter of beef of the same weight"). – iridescent 23:37, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Is this article for real?

• Is this article for real? I find it unbeveliable. Toby Douglass (talk) 13:09, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
  • Yes. – iridescent 14:02, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
• I suppose I'm more credulous than many, but I don't find this article unbelievable at all. (The "Did You Know..." blurb seemed far less believable, but that was because it didn't include the details.) It sounds like this poor bastard had a serious fault in his digestive system which prevented him from absorbing food properly; the stuff was just passing through him. Too bad that the nature of his problem is never properly explained. --Colin Douglas Howell (talk) 17:25, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
  • It was almost certainly some kind of fault in his digestive system, and he was forced to scavenge garbage and perform in the eighteenth century equivalent of geek shows to survive; France in this post-revolution period wasn't the modern welfare-state of today or even the vicious but ruthlessly efficient state built by Napoleon, but a country under total embargo by the Royal Navy, at war with most of its neighbours, and ripping itself apart internally through civil war. Whatever he was suffering from, while there aren't any recent cases I'm aware of there are certainly other well-documented cases from history; Tarrare's contemporary, the Polish soldier Charles Domery, appears to have suffered from the same condition, and relatively detailed records survive of his diet, appearance and behavior following his capture and internment by the British. However, none of the sources have anything more than the vaguest speculation as to the cause. The fact that neither high-dose laxatives (compressed tobacco, vinegar) nor medication to induce constipation (laudanum, high dosages of boiled eggs) appear to have any effect strongly implies that his digestive tract wasn't absorbing nutrition correctly, but nowhere does anyone actually say so. – iridescent 17:10, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
    • The book referenced in the preceding post also tells us of a man who lived to be 169 years old, so I don't think we are obliged to consider that particular source even remotely reliable. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.189.206.174 (talk) 19:14, 17 June 2010 (UTC)
      • So, take your pick from 115 others, including Encyclopedia Britannica, the Annual Register or Charles Dickens. Both Domery and Tarrare existed, beyond any reasonable doubt. – iridescent 20:07, 17 June 2010 (UTC)
      • PS. We have an article about the man who lived to be 169, as well, if you really want something to get angry about. – iridescent 20:20, 17 June 2010 (UTC)
        • When you say Terrare "existed beyond any reasonable doubt," I wonder about that. It is beyond any reasonable doubt that an apparently reputable paper appeared in 1804 recounting the story. But could it have been a hoax? Or a real case, severely exaggerated? Prima facie, I don't see why not. Are there contemporary newspaper reports, military records, that sort of thing? Or is it all just repeating the original 1804 case report? EvanHarper (talk) 13:43, 17 July 2010 (UTC)
          • I think you may be misunderstanding how Wikipedia works. Even if military records etc existed which flatly contradicted the story as told by Percy, it wouldn't affect this article. Wikipedia's policy is that analytic or evaluative claims (that is, discussion of whether something is true) are based only on what is published in reliable secondary sources. Since in this case every secondary source to cover the subject treats Percy's account as accurate, Wikipedia does as well; I'm not aware of any secondary source to treat Percy's account as untrue. To reiterate, this was not an isolated case; as well as the aforementioned (and very well documented) Charles Domery in the same period, there's the extremely widely covered Lizzie Velasquez, who appears to be suffering from the same (or a very similar) condition and is alive, well, and living in Texas. – iridescent 14:36, 17 July 2010 (UTC)
            • Wait a minute here. What did I say that sounded like, "Wikipedia should treat Terrare's case history as inaccurate or of dubious accuracy?" All of your rigamarole about reliable secondary sources would have been relevant if I had said that, but I didn't. Rather I questioned "your analytic or evaluative claim (that is, discussion of whether something is true.)" And then you responded by saying, in effect, it doesn't matter whether something is true. Well, which is it? If it doesn't matter, why did you bring it up in the first place? How come you get to make claims about what you think is the WP:TRUTH, but when someone questions them, all of a sudden WP:RELIABLE SOURCES are all that matter?
            • You have covered this talk page with WP:OR claims; you are diagnosing the guy's medical conditions, for pete's sake. That's fine, it's all in good fun; you've been scrupulous about not putting such speculations into the article proper. But don't pretend like your speculations are fine, whereas my speculations are evil original research and I don't understand Wikipedia. EvanHarper (talk) 21:17, 17 July 2010 (UTC)
              • WP:OR can be quite useful if used on a talk page and not as a source for the article. If someone comes up with a personal experience or a scientific analysis that contradicts a claim, we can then search for citations to reliable sources either confirming or debunking the claim. Either way, Wikipedia is improved; either a change is made with a proper citation supporting it, or an existing claim that is likely to be challenged gets better citations. Guy Macon 17:13, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

Scientific Basis

Have any specialists considered what caused his condition on a biochemical level? My suspicion is that he has an uncoupling disorder, so that his oxidative phosphorylation process mostly resulted in waste heat rather than useable energy. This seems to be supported by the fact that he was known to be very hot to the touch and sweat profusely etc. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 220.253.71.120 (talk) 13:59, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

Almost certainly hyperthyroidism; thyroid disorders have always been statistically high in the Rhone-Alpes and Switzerland as the soil is very low in iodine. Today the French and Swiss governments lace school meals in the area with iodized salt, but obviously that wasn't an option in the eighteenth century. However, there were (obviously) no biochemical tests on him at the time, so it's impossible to say what the cause was. Jan Bondeson, who in his day job when not writing books is a lecturer in endocrinology and rheumatology, speculates that the cause may have been a damaged amygdala. – iridescent 2 14:13, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

Suggestion: Create a new section of modern views of what might have caused this.

If well referenced information exists on how different modern medical specialists or groups have commented on Tarrare's available medical data, that would be interesting in its own section, which I couldn't find in a skim of the article. It's beyond what I can do, so all I can do is suggest it. Thanks! --Geekdiva (talk) 01:20, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

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Problem with references

Half of the sources are from one person, Bondeson. Is this a problem? Worst Username (talk) 22:43, 2 April 2018 (UTC)

fat stomach

sources for this?