“Every sense of your body is taken over by the climate,” said the New York City native Christopher Bergland, who set a record at triple ironmans (7.2-mile swim, 336-mile bike, 78.6-mile run) but failed to finish one of his three Badwater races.

Not only are the formaldehyde off-gassings from treated cotton or treated synthetic fiber inhaled by breathing in close proximity to the sheets and pillowcases, but skin contact with such off-gassings can produce clothing dermatitis.

He had always been remarkably immune from such little ailments, and had only once in his life been ill, of a vicious pneumonia long ago at school. He hadn't the faintest idea what to with a cold in the head, he just took quinine and continued to blow his nose.

There was a third class, small indeed when compared to those vast multitudes actuated by fanaticism or interest, but destined to exercise the most beneficial and lasting influence—the reflecting and theoretic few, who saw in universal freedom the only tie between man and his kind—the only rational hope whereon to ground the dissemination of equitable principles among the human race.