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These people spent 37 days in a 9ft dinghy in the ocean. A ladder rung, plus the rain water mixed with turtle guts from the bottom of the boat saved their lives.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2009/aug/22/shipwre...

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"What kept them going was grit, determination and turtle blood. "You have to knock it back quickly, otherwise it sets into blancmange," Douglas explains. Plus it's got an "aftertaste that makes you want to wretch". Their mother rubbed turtle oil on the salt-water boils, and tried to keep them all hydrated with makeshift enema tubes made from the rungs of a ladder. "It was her nursing background. She knew the water at the bottom of the dinghy was poisonous if taken orally because it was a mixture of rain water, blood and turtle offal. But if you take it rectally, the poison doesn't go through the digestive system."

Unbelievable!

Ah, those nurses.

Tangent time: Florence Nightingale was an early pioneer (maybe the first?) of data-driven medical policies.

She grew up in a time when women hit a ceiling pretty quickly, despite being extremely competent and in her case mathematically gifted.

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