French National Injlitute. 2Q£ 



vourec! alive. It was neceflary to drive him away by force 

 or threats from the apartments of the dead, and from the 

 places where the blood drawn from the lick had been depo- 

 sited. Attempts were made, but in vain, to cure this voracity, 

 by giving him in turns fat bodies, acids, opium, and even 

 la coque du Levant. The difappearance of a child fix ecu 

 months old having excited itrong fufpicions again ft him. 

 he deferted : but in the year 6 he was admitted into the h<if- 

 pital of Vcrfailles, in a (late of confumption, which had fuc- 

 ceeded this horrible appetite, and which, according to his own 

 account, was occafioned by a filvcr fork that had remained in 

 the inteftinal canal. 



As he died foon after, C. Tuffier, chief furgeon of that 

 hofpital, had the courage to open the body, notwithstanding 

 the infupportable odour which it exhaled: but the fork was not 

 found. The ftomach was of an extraordinary fize ; the in- 

 terlines, completely ulcerated, exhibited remarkable fwellings; 

 and the gall-bladder was of a very great capacity. 



Tarare was of a fmall ftature, delicate and weak; his look 

 had nothing in it favage. When young, the fkin of his 

 belly could almoft be wrapped round his body, and after 

 a full meal one might have almoft believed him to be drop- 

 iical : a thick vapour iffued in torrents from his mouth, his 

 whole body fmoked, the fweat flowed in abundance from 

 his head, and, like feveral of the mod voracious animals^ he 

 fell afleep to digeft. 



C. Percy terminated his memoir by explaining the internal 

 organization of thofe wretches condemned bv nature to ex- 

 perience this cruel and inordinate hunger: he explained the 

 greater part of the phsenomena they exhibit; and he con- 

 cludes, from numerous inftances of polyphagia which he has 

 collected, that the unfortunate perfons fubjecl: to it, find, for 

 the mod part, an end to their torments by death, before they 

 attain to the age of forty* 



Account of the labours of the Clafs of the Phyfical and 

 Mathematical Sciences during the third quarter of the 

 year 10. 



Astronomy. — Obfervations on the new Vlanci difcoverel 

 by M. Olbcrs, of Bremen ; and the. Oppajkion of Ceres, the 

 Planet dij covered by M. Piazzi. 



A conjecture as eafy to be formed as ufelefs to aftronomy 

 had given reafon to prcfume the exiftence o( a planet be- 

 twen Mars and Jupiter; but the law which aftronomers 

 were pleafed to eftablilh from the diftances of the planets 



U % known, 



