The Miracle Mongers - An Expose by Harry Houdini

Perhaps you did not know that Harry Houdini was an author.  He wrote because he was a skeptic of spiritualism and driven to ghost-busting and writing about the frauds he found.

Opening The Miracle Mongers (£1.58 UK edition) (EUR 1,78 Deutsch edition) entirely at random, I found the following compelling passage:

MANY of our most noted magicians have considered it not beneath their dignity to introduce fire-eating into their programmes, either in their own work or by the employment of a "Fire Artist." Although seldom presenting it in his recent performances, Ching Ling Foo is a fire-eater of the highest type, refining the effect with the same subtle artistry that marks all the work of this super-magician.

   Of Foo's thousand imitators the only positively successful one was William E. Robinson, whose tragic death while in the performance of the bullet-catching trick is the latest addition to the long list of casualties chargeable to that ill-omened juggle. He carried the imitation even as far as the name, calling himself Chung Ling Soo. Robinson was very successful in the classic trick of apparently eating large quantities of cotton and blowing smoke and sparks from the mouth. His teeth were finally quite destroyed by the continued performance of this trick, the method of which may be found in Chapter Six.

Wow, who knew that fire-eating could be of the highest type or not?  I might have guessed that bullet catching carried an ill omen though  . . .

The full title of this work is MIRACLE MONGERS AND THEIR METHODS: A COMPLETE EXPOSÉ OF THE MODUS OPERANDI OF FIRE EATERS, HEAT RESISTERS, POISON EATERS, VENOMOUS REPTILE DEFIERS, SWORD SWALLOWERS, HUMAN OSTRICHES, STRONG MEN, ETC. 

There will always be magicians and those who are amazed by them.  Here is your chance to sit and learn from the greatest of them. 

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