Like everyone who ever met Domery, his British captors were amazed by how much the man could eat. At the time, prisoners of war like Domery were provided with rations paid for by the country they were fighting for. Domery and his imprisoned comrades all received a standard ration consisting of 740 g of bread, 230 g of vegetables, and a small amount of butter or cheese. Unlike his fellow prisoners, Domery wolfed down his daily allowance and begged his captors for more. Gradually, the British increased Domery’s rations until he was getting 10 times as much food as anyone else.
Still, it wasn’t enough for Domery, and he once again took to eating cats or even any stray rodents he found in his cell. Domery’s bottomless stomach piqued the curiosity of his captors, and the commandant of the prison contacted the government board overseeing prisoners of war to tell them about Domery. The government took an interest in him as well and dispatched two doctors to run some tests. The doctors arrived at the prison and decided to spend an entire day feeding Domery different foods and testing his vital signs to see if they could figure out why he was so hungry.
At 4:00 AM, the doctors woke Domery up in his cell and offered him some meat. Specifically, they offered him 1.8 kg of raw cow’s udders. Domery was thrilled and gulped it down immediately. The astonished doctors returned at 9:30 AM when they gave Domery another 2.3 kg of raw beef, and noting that he often ate the prison candles, 453 g of tallow candles along with a bottle of wine to wash it down. Domery consumed all of it, as he did with an identical meal the doctors gave him that afternoon. While you’d expect any normal man with almost a kilogram of candles in his stomach to vomit or at least just feel sick, Domery apparently suffered no ill effects.
Clearly, Domery was not a normal man. With the medical mystery deepening, the doctors began taking careful notes of Domery’s activity throughout the course of a normal day. They found that Domery tended to lay down for bed at around 8:00 PM but spent the next two hours awake, sweating heavily. At around 10, he would fall asleep and the sweating would stop. At 1:00 AM every morning, Domery would wake up and immediately eat anything he could find. But if no food was available, he would smoke and then go back to sleep.
Domery would then awake again at around 5 or 6 and begin to sweat heavily. By the time Domery got out of bed to begin his daily routine of eating anything he could find, the sweating would stop, only to begin again whenever he ate. But aside from the sweating, there seemed to be nothing strange about Domery’s body. The doctors noted that in spite of his diet, his weight was perfectly normal, and he was healthy enough to complete long army marches. So, why exactly was Charles Domery so hungry?