If you haven't seen it, "The Right Stuff" is an absolutely awesome movie about this era. Of course it takes some dramatic liberties, but is overall also quite historically accurate. So one fun anecdote, that really happened, is that these capsules/suits were so barebones that there wasn't even urine collection. The pilot was expected to simply 'hold it.' In one launch, there was a delay of 4 hours and Alan Shepard ended up pissing his suit - resulting in short circuits among the telemetry. The solution on the next flights was for astronauts to wear rubber pants... seriously! [1]

Put another way, these guys were being treated like a glorified version of Laika [2], and they knew it. It was all about achieving the mission goal as quickly and cheaply as possible. Everything else was secondary. This sort of stuff wouldn't pass muster in a million years in modern times, which again gets back to the original topic.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Mercury#Pilot_accommod...

[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laika