[Giuliani, Filippo] | Card games touted by a great drinker of water

[Giuliani, Filippo]

Vera, e reale scelta di giochi di carte, e di mano. Vienna and Trento: np, [ca. 1678-1681]

Small 8vo (146 x 101 mm). Woodcut Hapsburg arms on title-page; imprint cropped, A5–8 stained in lower right corner. Early pink speckled wrappers; sewing loose, detached from wrappers.

The full title reads in translation: "Real and true selection of card tricks and sleight of hand with some wonderful out-of-print secrets and now published by myself Filippo Giulani, also called Lo Scotto, Great Drinker of Water and professor of various medicinal Secrets, which will be revealed by talking with him Since he is still the Chemist of his Imperial Majesty and of six Kings and many Princes of Europe."

Happel tells in his memoirs of a water-spewer in Hamburg around 1680, who drank up to 30 glasses of water a day, and spewed them back up in the form of different wines, spirits and perfumes. Perhaps he is identical with the Jouliani Scotto who appeared in Paris in 1678 under the name “Le Grand Scot Romain” and filed a petition with the police 12 March 1681 against French actors who had prevented him from staging his performances. His advertisement read: “The great Scot will drink an unbelievable amount of water, which he will change into wine of every kind, milk, beer, ink and fragrant liquids of different scents . . . He will cause lettuce to come out of his mouth, as fresh as it is when sold in the marketplace, two plates with live fish, roses, carnations, tulips and many other flowers, as lovely and fresh as they grow in a garden in springtime, live birds, 300 or 400 gold pieces, neckties, cuffs, lace, ribbons and a thousand other oddities, which one cannot describe and which appear to go beyond the powers of the imagination” ( E. G. Happel, Größte Denkwürdigkeiten der Welt oder Relationes curiosae. Hamburg, 1683).

REFERENCE:

Exemplars, p. 81