The principle of upsetting knots to make them dissolve, on which Slydini mounted his famous routine, appears in Reginald Scot's Discoverie of Witchcraft, 1584, p. 336. It appears in a number of other works on conjuring from that time on. A prominent nineteenth-century example is the anonymous The Magicians' Own Book, 1857, p. 13 (also published as The Boy's Own Conjuring Book, 1859).