‘How their bodies stand it,’ he said, ‘I cannot tell. I can but suppose that sea-air, one solid meal a day, more or less continual damp, heavy labour, no more than four hours of uninterrupted sleep at a time, and that taken in such a tight-packed crowd of unwashed sweating bodies as would be thought severe in a Dublin doss-house, must be what the human frame in fact requires to keep it thoroughly robust; and that our notions of hygiene are quite fallacious.
