It is not very palatable and you may imagine how Tartarin-Sancho enjoyed it.
Tartarin de Tarascon combined this with several other sensible methods of training.

For instance, to habituate himself to long marches he would go round his morning constitutional seven or eight times, sometimes at a brisk walk, sometimes at the trot with two pebbles in his mouth.

Then to accustom himself to nocturnal chills and the mists of dawn, he went into the garden and stayed there until ten or eleven at night, alone with his rifle, on watch behind the baobab.
Finally, for as long as the menagerie remained in Tarascon, those hat hunters who had stayed late at Costecalde's could see in the shadows, as they passed the Place du Chateau, a figure pacing up and down behind the cages...

it was Tartarin training himself to listen unmoved to the roaring of lions in the African night..