There is no evidence that this form of torture was ever used by the Chinese. The popularity of the term "Chinese water torture" may have arisen from Harry Houdini's Chinese Water Torture Cell (a feat of escapology introduced in Berlin at Circus Busch September 211912 ; the escape entailed Houdini being bound and suspended upside-down in a locked glass and steel cabinet full to overflowing with water, from which he escaped), together with the Fu Manchu stories of Sax Rohmer that were popular in the 1930s (in which the evil Fu Manchu subjected his victims to various ingenious tortures, such as the wire jacket). Hippolytus de Marsiliis is credited with the invention of a form of water torture. Having observed how drops of water falling one by one on a stone gradually created a hollow, he appl