Tarrare
Encyclopedia
Tarrare sometimes spelled Tarare, was a French showman and soldier, noted for his unusual eating habits. Able to eat vast amounts of meat, he was constantly hungry; his parents were unable to provide for him, and he was turned out of the family home as a teenager. He travelled France in the company of a band of thieves and prostitutes, before becoming the warm-up act to a travelling charlatan
; he would swallow corks, stones, live animals and whole apples. He then took this act to Paris
where he worked as a street performer.
On the outbreak of the War of the First Coalition Tarrare joined the French Revolutionary Army
. With military rations unable to satisfy his large appetite, he would eat any available food from gutters and refuse heaps but his condition still deteriorated through hunger. Suffering from exhaustion, he was hospitalised and became the subject of a series of medical experiments to test his eating capacity, in which, among other things, he ate a meal intended for 15 people in a single sitting, ate live cats, snakes, lizards and puppies, and swallowed an eel whole without chewing. Despite his unusual diet he was of normal size and appearance, and showed no signs of mental illness other than what was described as an apathetic temperament.
General Alexandre de Beauharnais decided to put Tarrare's abilities to use, and he was employed as a courier by the French army, with the intention that he would swallow documents, pass through enemy lines, and recover them from his stool once safely at his destination. Unfortunately for Tarrare, he was unable to speak German, and on his first mission was captured by Prussian
forces, severely beaten and underwent a mock execution
before being returned to French lines.
Chastened by this experience, he agreed to submit to any procedure that would cure his appetite, and was treated with laudanum
, tobacco pills, wine vinegar and soft-boiled eggs. The procedures failed, and doctors were unable to keep him on a controlled diet; he would sneak out of the hospital to scavenge for offal in gutters, rubbish heaps and outside butchers' shops, and attempted to drink the blood of other patients in the hospital and to eat the corpses in the hospital morgue. After falling under suspicion of eating a toddler he was ejected from the hospital. He reappeared four years later in Versailles
suffering from severe tuberculosis
, and died shortly afterwards, following a lengthy bout of exudative diarrhoea.
, around 1772. His date of birth is unrecorded, and it is not known if Tarrare was his real name or a nickname.
As a child, Tarrare had a huge appetite, and by his teens was able to eat a quarter of a bullock, weighing as much as Tarrare himself, in a single day. By this time his parents were unable to provide for him and had forced him to leave home. For some years after this he toured the country with a roaming band of thieves and prostitutes, begging and stealing for food, before gaining employment as a warm-up act to a travelling charlatan
. Tarrare would draw a crowd by eating corks, stones and live animals and by swallowing an entire basketful of apples one after the other. He would eat ravenously, and was particularly fond of snake meat.
In 1788 Tarrare moved to Paris
, to work as a street performer. He appears to have been successful in general, but on one occasion the act went wrong and he suffered severe intestinal obstruction. Members of the crowd carried him to the Hôtel-Dieu
hospital, where he was treated with powerful laxative
s. He made a full recovery, and offered to demonstrate his act by eating his surgeon's watch and chain; M. Giraud, the surgeon, was unimpressed by the offer and warned him that if he did so, he would cut Tarrare open to recover the items.
The cause of Tarrare's behaviour is not known. While there are other documented cases of similar behaviour from the period none of the subjects other than Tarrare were autopsied, and there have been no modern documented cases resembling Tarrare. Hyperthyroidism
can induce an extreme appetite and rapid weight loss, while Bondeson (2006) speculates that Tarrare suffered from a damaged amygdala
; it is known that injuries to the amygdala in animals can induce polyphagia
.
. Unfortunately for him, military rations were insufficient to satisfy his appetite. He would carry out tasks for other soldiers in return for a share of their rations and scavenge on the dungheap for scraps, but this was not enough to satisfy him. Suffering from extreme exhaustion, he was admitted to the military hospital at Soultz-Haut-Rhin
. He was granted quadruple rations but remained hungry; he would scavenge for garbage in gutters and refuse containers, eat the scraps of food left by other patients, and creep into the apothecary
's room to eat the poultice
s. Military surgeons were unable to understand his appetite; Tarrare was ordered to remain in the military hospital to take part in physiological experiments designed by Dr. Courville (surgeon to the 9th Hussar Regiment) and George Didier, Baron Percy, surgeon-in-chief of the hospital.
Courville and Percy decided to test Tarrare's capacity for food. A meal had been prepared for 15 labourers near the hospital gates; although generally hospital staff restrained Tarrare in the presence of food, on this occasion Courville allowed him to reach the table undisturbed. Tarrare ate the entire meal of two large meat pies, plates of grease and salt and four gallons of milk, and then immediately fell asleep; Courville noted that Tarrare's belly became taut and inflated like a large balloon. On another occasion Tarrare was presented with a live cat. He tore the cat's abdomen open with his teeth and drank its blood, and proceeded to eat the entire cat aside from its bones, before vomiting up its fur and skin. Following this, hospital staff offered Tarrare a variety of other animals including snakes, lizards and puppies, all of which were eaten; he also swallowed an entire eel without chewing, having first crushed its head with his teeth.
Tarrare was called on by Beauharnais to demonstrate his abilities before a gathering of the commanders of the Army of the Rhine. Having swallowed the box successfully, Tarrare was given a wheelbarrow filled with 30 pounds (13.6 kg) of raw bull's lungs and liver as a reward, which he immediately ate in front of the assembled generals.
Following this successful demonstration, Tarrare became employed officially as a spy of the Army of the Rhine. Although General de Beauharnais was convinced of Tarrare's physical capacity to carry messages internally, he was concerned about his mental state and reluctant to entrust him initially with militarily significant documents. Tarrare was ordered as his first assignment to carry a message to a French colonel imprisoned by the Prussians near Neustadt
; he was told that the documents were of great military significance, but in reality de Beauharnais had merely written a note asking the colonel to confirm that the message had been received successfully, and if so to return a reply of any potentially useful information about Prussian troop movements.
Tarrare crossed Prussian lines under cover of darkness, disguised as a German peasant. Unable to speak German, he soon attracted the attention of local residents, who alerted the Prussian authorities, and he was captured outside Landau
. A strip search found nothing suspicious on his person, and despite being whipped by Prussian soldiers he refused to betray his mission. Brought before the local Prussian commander, General Zoegli, he again refused to talk and was imprisoned. After 24 hours of captivity, Tarrare relented and explained the scheme to his captors. He was chained to a latrine, and eventually, 30 hours after being swallowed, the wooden box emerged. Zoegli was furious when the documents, which Tarrare had said contained vital intelligence, transpired only to be de Beauharnais's dummy message, and Tarrare was taken to a gallows
and the noose placed around his neck. (Some sources state that Zoegli never retrieved the box, as Tarrare had the presence of mind to recover and eat the stool containing it before it could be seized by the Prussians.) At the last minute Zoegli relented, and Tarrare was taken down from the scaffold, given a severe beating, and released near the French lines.
without success; further treatments with wine vinegar
and tobacco
pills were likewise unsuccessful. Following these failures Percy fed Tarrare large quantities of soft-boiled eggs, but this also failed to suppress his appetite. Efforts to keep him on any kind of controlled diet failed; he would sneak out of the hospital to scavenge for offal outside butchers' shops and to fight stray dogs for carrion in gutters, alleys and rubbish heaps. He was also caught several times within the hospital drinking from patients undergoing bloodletting
, and attempting to eat the bodies in the hospital mortuary. Other doctors believed that Tarrare was mentally ill and pressed for him to be transferred to a lunatic asylum, but Percy was keen to continue his experiments and Tarrare remained in the military hospital.
After some time, a 14-month-old child disappeared from the hospital, and Tarrare was immediately suspected. Percy was unable or unwilling to defend him, and the hospital staff chased Tarrare from the hospital, to which he never returned.
hospital contacted Percy to notify him that a patient of theirs wished to see him. It transpired to be Tarrare, now bedridden and weak. Tarrare told Percy that he had swallowed a golden fork two years earlier which he believed was lodged inside him and causing his current weakness, and hoped that Percy could find some way to remove it; however Percy recognised him as suffering from advanced tuberculosis
. A month later Tarrare began to suffer from continuous exudative diarrhoea, dying shortly afterwards.
The corpse rotted quickly, and the surgeons of the hospital refused to dissect it. Tessier, however, wanted to find out how Tarrare differed from the norm internally, and was also curious as to whether the gold fork was actually lodged inside him. At the autopsy, Tarrare's gullet was found to be abnormally wide, and when his jaws were opened surgeons could see down a broad canal into the stomach. His body was found to be filled with pus
; his liver
and gallbladder
were abnormally large, and his stomach was enormous, covered in ulcers
, and filled most of his abdominal cavity.
The fork was never found.
Charlatan
A charlatan is a person practicing quackery or some similar confidence trick in order to obtain money, fame or other advantages via some form of pretense or deception....
; he would swallow corks, stones, live animals and whole apples. He then took this act to Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
where he worked as a street performer.
On the outbreak of the War of the First Coalition Tarrare joined the French Revolutionary Army
French Revolutionary Army
The French Revolutionary Army is the term used to refer to the military of France during the period between the fall of the ancien regime under Louis XVI in 1792 and the formation of the First French Empire under Napoleon Bonaparte in 1804. These armies were characterised by their revolutionary...
. With military rations unable to satisfy his large appetite, he would eat any available food from gutters and refuse heaps but his condition still deteriorated through hunger. Suffering from exhaustion, he was hospitalised and became the subject of a series of medical experiments to test his eating capacity, in which, among other things, he ate a meal intended for 15 people in a single sitting, ate live cats, snakes, lizards and puppies, and swallowed an eel whole without chewing. Despite his unusual diet he was of normal size and appearance, and showed no signs of mental illness other than what was described as an apathetic temperament.
General Alexandre de Beauharnais decided to put Tarrare's abilities to use, and he was employed as a courier by the French army, with the intention that he would swallow documents, pass through enemy lines, and recover them from his stool once safely at his destination. Unfortunately for Tarrare, he was unable to speak German, and on his first mission was captured by Prussian
Kingdom of Prussia
The Kingdom of Prussia was a German kingdom from 1701 to 1918. Until the defeat of Germany in World War I, it comprised almost two-thirds of the area of the German Empire...
forces, severely beaten and underwent a mock execution
Mock execution
A mock execution is a stratagem in which a victim is deliberately but falsely made to feel that his execution or that of another person is imminent or is taking place. It may be staged for an audience or a subject who is made to believe that he is being led to his own execution...
before being returned to French lines.
Chastened by this experience, he agreed to submit to any procedure that would cure his appetite, and was treated with laudanum
Laudanum
Laudanum , also known as Tincture of Opium, is an alcoholic herbal preparation containing approximately 10% powdered opium by weight ....
, tobacco pills, wine vinegar and soft-boiled eggs. The procedures failed, and doctors were unable to keep him on a controlled diet; he would sneak out of the hospital to scavenge for offal in gutters, rubbish heaps and outside butchers' shops, and attempted to drink the blood of other patients in the hospital and to eat the corpses in the hospital morgue. After falling under suspicion of eating a toddler he was ejected from the hospital. He reappeared four years later in Versailles
Versailles
Versailles , a city renowned for its château, the Palace of Versailles, was the de facto capital of the kingdom of France for over a century, from 1682 to 1789. It is now a wealthy suburb of Paris and remains an important administrative and judicial centre...
suffering from severe tuberculosis
Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...
, and died shortly afterwards, following a lengthy bout of exudative diarrhoea.
Childhood and early life
Tarrare was born in rural France, near LyonLyon
Lyon , is a city in east-central France in the Rhône-Alpes region, situated between Paris and Marseille. Lyon is located at from Paris, from Marseille, from Geneva, from Turin, and from Barcelona. The residents of the city are called Lyonnais....
, around 1772. His date of birth is unrecorded, and it is not known if Tarrare was his real name or a nickname.
As a child, Tarrare had a huge appetite, and by his teens was able to eat a quarter of a bullock, weighing as much as Tarrare himself, in a single day. By this time his parents were unable to provide for him and had forced him to leave home. For some years after this he toured the country with a roaming band of thieves and prostitutes, begging and stealing for food, before gaining employment as a warm-up act to a travelling charlatan
Charlatan
A charlatan is a person practicing quackery or some similar confidence trick in order to obtain money, fame or other advantages via some form of pretense or deception....
. Tarrare would draw a crowd by eating corks, stones and live animals and by swallowing an entire basketful of apples one after the other. He would eat ravenously, and was particularly fond of snake meat.
In 1788 Tarrare moved to Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, to work as a street performer. He appears to have been successful in general, but on one occasion the act went wrong and he suffered severe intestinal obstruction. Members of the crowd carried him to the Hôtel-Dieu
Hôtel-Dieu de Paris
The Hôtel-Dieu de Paris is regarded as the oldest hospital in the city of Paris, France, and is the most central of the Assistance publique - hôpitaux de Paris hospitals. The hospital is linked to the Faculté de Médecine Paris-Descartes...
hospital, where he was treated with powerful laxative
Laxative
Laxatives are foods, compounds, or drugs taken to induce bowel movements or to loosen the stool, most often taken to treat constipation. Certain stimulant, lubricant, and saline laxatives are used to evacuate the colon for rectal and/or bowel examinations, and may be supplemented by enemas under...
s. He made a full recovery, and offered to demonstrate his act by eating his surgeon's watch and chain; M. Giraud, the surgeon, was unimpressed by the offer and warned him that if he did so, he would cut Tarrare open to recover the items.
Appearance and behaviour
Despite his unusual diet, Tarrare was slim and of average height; at the age of 17 he weighed only . He was described as having unusually soft fair hair, and an abnormally wide mouth in which his teeth were heavily stained, and on which the lips were almost invisible. When he had not eaten his skin would hang so loosely that he could wrap the fold of skin from his abdomen around his waist, and when full his abdomen would distend "like a huge balloon". The skin of his cheeks was wrinkled and hung loosely, and when stretched out he was able to hold twelve eggs or apples in his mouth. His body was hot to the touch and he sweated heavily and constantly suffered from foul body odour; he was described as stinking "to such a degree that he could not be endured within the distance of twenty paces". This smell would get noticeably worse after he had eaten, his eyes and cheeks would become bloodshot, a visible vapour would rise from his body, and he would become lethargic, during which time he would belch noisily and his jaws would make swallowing motions. He suffered from chronic diarrhoea, which was said to be "fetid beyond all conception". Despite his large intake of food he did not appear either to vomit excessively or to gain weight. Aside from his eating habits, his contemporaries saw no apparent signs of mental illness or unusual behaviour in him, other than an apparently apathetic temperament, with "a complete lack of force and ideas".The cause of Tarrare's behaviour is not known. While there are other documented cases of similar behaviour from the period none of the subjects other than Tarrare were autopsied, and there have been no modern documented cases resembling Tarrare. Hyperthyroidism
Hyperthyroidism
Hyperthyroidism is the term for overactive tissue within the thyroid gland causing an overproduction of thyroid hormones . Hyperthyroidism is thus a cause of thyrotoxicosis, the clinical condition of increased thyroid hormones in the blood. Hyperthyroidism and thyrotoxicosis are not synonymous...
can induce an extreme appetite and rapid weight loss, while Bondeson (2006) speculates that Tarrare suffered from a damaged amygdala
Amygdala
The ' are almond-shaped groups of nuclei located deep within the medial temporal lobes of the brain in complex vertebrates, including humans. Shown in research to perform a primary role in the processing and memory of emotional reactions, the amygdalae are considered part of the limbic system.-...
; it is known that injuries to the amygdala in animals can induce polyphagia
Polyphagia
Polyphagia means "eating too much". It derives from the Greek words πολύς which means "very much", and φαγῶ , verb for "I eat"....
.
Military service
On the outbreak of the War of the First Coalition Tarrare joined the French Revolutionary ArmyFrench Revolutionary Army
The French Revolutionary Army is the term used to refer to the military of France during the period between the fall of the ancien regime under Louis XVI in 1792 and the formation of the First French Empire under Napoleon Bonaparte in 1804. These armies were characterised by their revolutionary...
. Unfortunately for him, military rations were insufficient to satisfy his appetite. He would carry out tasks for other soldiers in return for a share of their rations and scavenge on the dungheap for scraps, but this was not enough to satisfy him. Suffering from extreme exhaustion, he was admitted to the military hospital at Soultz-Haut-Rhin
Soultz-Haut-Rhin
Soultz-Haut-Rhin is a commune in the Haut-Rhin department in Alsace in north-eastern France.Its inhabitants are called Soultziens.-Geography:The town of Soultz-Haut-Rhin has an enclave located northeast of Goldbach-Altenbach....
. He was granted quadruple rations but remained hungry; he would scavenge for garbage in gutters and refuse containers, eat the scraps of food left by other patients, and creep into the apothecary
Apothecary
Apothecary is a historical name for a medical professional who formulates and dispenses materia medica to physicians, surgeons and patients — a role now served by a pharmacist and some caregivers....
's room to eat the poultice
Poultice
A poultice, also called cataplasm, is a soft moist mass, often heated and medicated, that is spread on cloth over the skin to treat an aching, inflamed, or painful part of the body. It can be used on wounds such as cuts...
s. Military surgeons were unable to understand his appetite; Tarrare was ordered to remain in the military hospital to take part in physiological experiments designed by Dr. Courville (surgeon to the 9th Hussar Regiment) and George Didier, Baron Percy, surgeon-in-chief of the hospital.
Courville and Percy decided to test Tarrare's capacity for food. A meal had been prepared for 15 labourers near the hospital gates; although generally hospital staff restrained Tarrare in the presence of food, on this occasion Courville allowed him to reach the table undisturbed. Tarrare ate the entire meal of two large meat pies, plates of grease and salt and four gallons of milk, and then immediately fell asleep; Courville noted that Tarrare's belly became taut and inflated like a large balloon. On another occasion Tarrare was presented with a live cat. He tore the cat's abdomen open with his teeth and drank its blood, and proceeded to eat the entire cat aside from its bones, before vomiting up its fur and skin. Following this, hospital staff offered Tarrare a variety of other animals including snakes, lizards and puppies, all of which were eaten; he also swallowed an entire eel without chewing, having first crushed its head with his teeth.
Service as a military courier
After several months he spent as an experimental case, military authorities began to press for Tarrare to be returned to active duty. Dr. Courville was keen to continue his investigations into Tarrare's eating habits and digestive system, and approached General Alexandre de Beauharnais with a suggestion that Tarrare's unusual abilities and behaviour could be put to military use. A document was placed inside a wooden box which was in turn fed to Tarrare. Two days later, the box was retrieved from his excrement, with the document still in legible condition. Courville proposed to de Beauharnais that Tarrare could thus serve as a military courier, carrying documents securely through enemy territory with no risk of their being found if he were searched.Tarrare was called on by Beauharnais to demonstrate his abilities before a gathering of the commanders of the Army of the Rhine. Having swallowed the box successfully, Tarrare was given a wheelbarrow filled with 30 pounds (13.6 kg) of raw bull's lungs and liver as a reward, which he immediately ate in front of the assembled generals.
Following this successful demonstration, Tarrare became employed officially as a spy of the Army of the Rhine. Although General de Beauharnais was convinced of Tarrare's physical capacity to carry messages internally, he was concerned about his mental state and reluctant to entrust him initially with militarily significant documents. Tarrare was ordered as his first assignment to carry a message to a French colonel imprisoned by the Prussians near Neustadt
Neustadt an der Weinstraße
Neustadt an der Weinstraße is a town located in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. With 53,892 inhabitants as of 2002, it is the largest town called Neustadt.-Etymology:...
; he was told that the documents were of great military significance, but in reality de Beauharnais had merely written a note asking the colonel to confirm that the message had been received successfully, and if so to return a reply of any potentially useful information about Prussian troop movements.
Tarrare crossed Prussian lines under cover of darkness, disguised as a German peasant. Unable to speak German, he soon attracted the attention of local residents, who alerted the Prussian authorities, and he was captured outside Landau
Landau
Landau or Landau in der Pfalz is an autonomous city surrounded by the Südliche Weinstraße district of southern Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It is a university town , a long-standing cultural centre, and a market and shopping town, surrounded by vineyards and wine-growing villages of the...
. A strip search found nothing suspicious on his person, and despite being whipped by Prussian soldiers he refused to betray his mission. Brought before the local Prussian commander, General Zoegli, he again refused to talk and was imprisoned. After 24 hours of captivity, Tarrare relented and explained the scheme to his captors. He was chained to a latrine, and eventually, 30 hours after being swallowed, the wooden box emerged. Zoegli was furious when the documents, which Tarrare had said contained vital intelligence, transpired only to be de Beauharnais's dummy message, and Tarrare was taken to a gallows
Gallows
A gallows is a frame, typically wooden, used for execution by hanging, or by means to torture before execution, as was used when being hanged, drawn and quartered...
and the noose placed around his neck. (Some sources state that Zoegli never retrieved the box, as Tarrare had the presence of mind to recover and eat the stool containing it before it could be seized by the Prussians.) At the last minute Zoegli relented, and Tarrare was taken down from the scaffold, given a severe beating, and released near the French lines.
Attempted cures
Following this incident, Tarrare was desperate to avoid further military service, and returned to the hospital, telling Percy that he would attempt any possible cure for his appetite. Percy treated him with laudanumLaudanum
Laudanum , also known as Tincture of Opium, is an alcoholic herbal preparation containing approximately 10% powdered opium by weight ....
without success; further treatments with wine vinegar
Vinegar
Vinegar is a liquid substance consisting mainly of acetic acid and water, the acetic acid being produced through the fermentation of ethanol by acetic acid bacteria. Commercial vinegar is produced either by fast or slow fermentation processes. Slow methods generally are used with traditional...
and tobacco
Tobacco
Tobacco is an agricultural product processed from the leaves of plants in the genus Nicotiana. It can be consumed, used as a pesticide and, in the form of nicotine tartrate, used in some medicines...
pills were likewise unsuccessful. Following these failures Percy fed Tarrare large quantities of soft-boiled eggs, but this also failed to suppress his appetite. Efforts to keep him on any kind of controlled diet failed; he would sneak out of the hospital to scavenge for offal outside butchers' shops and to fight stray dogs for carrion in gutters, alleys and rubbish heaps. He was also caught several times within the hospital drinking from patients undergoing bloodletting
Bloodletting
Bloodletting is the withdrawal of often little quantities of blood from a patient to cure or prevent illness and disease. Bloodletting was based on an ancient system of medicine in which blood and other bodily fluid were considered to be "humors" the proper balance of which maintained health...
, and attempting to eat the bodies in the hospital mortuary. Other doctors believed that Tarrare was mentally ill and pressed for him to be transferred to a lunatic asylum, but Percy was keen to continue his experiments and Tarrare remained in the military hospital.
After some time, a 14-month-old child disappeared from the hospital, and Tarrare was immediately suspected. Percy was unable or unwilling to defend him, and the hospital staff chased Tarrare from the hospital, to which he never returned.
Death
Four years later, in 1798, a M. Tessier of VersaillesVersailles
Versailles , a city renowned for its château, the Palace of Versailles, was the de facto capital of the kingdom of France for over a century, from 1682 to 1789. It is now a wealthy suburb of Paris and remains an important administrative and judicial centre...
hospital contacted Percy to notify him that a patient of theirs wished to see him. It transpired to be Tarrare, now bedridden and weak. Tarrare told Percy that he had swallowed a golden fork two years earlier which he believed was lodged inside him and causing his current weakness, and hoped that Percy could find some way to remove it; however Percy recognised him as suffering from advanced tuberculosis
Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...
. A month later Tarrare began to suffer from continuous exudative diarrhoea, dying shortly afterwards.
The corpse rotted quickly, and the surgeons of the hospital refused to dissect it. Tessier, however, wanted to find out how Tarrare differed from the norm internally, and was also curious as to whether the gold fork was actually lodged inside him. At the autopsy, Tarrare's gullet was found to be abnormally wide, and when his jaws were opened surgeons could see down a broad canal into the stomach. His body was found to be filled with pus
Pus
Pus is a viscous exudate, typically whitish-yellow, yellow, or yellow-brown, formed at the site of inflammatory during infection. An accumulation of pus in an enclosed tissue space is known as an abscess, whereas a visible collection of pus within or beneath the epidermis is known as a pustule or...
; his liver
Liver
The liver is a vital organ present in vertebrates and some other animals. It has a wide range of functions, including detoxification, protein synthesis, and production of biochemicals necessary for digestion...
and gallbladder
Gallbladder
In vertebrates the gallbladder is a small organ that aids mainly in fat digestion and concentrates bile produced by the liver. In humans the loss of the gallbladder is usually easily tolerated....
were abnormally large, and his stomach was enormous, covered in ulcers
Peptic ulcer
A peptic ulcer, also known as PUD or peptic ulcer disease, is the most common ulcer of an area of the gastrointestinal tract that is usually acidic and thus extremely painful. It is defined as mucosal erosions equal to or greater than 0.5 cm...
, and filled most of his abdominal cavity.
The fork was never found.