In 1925, Harry Leat, a well-known magic dealer in England, released one of his many publications, USA Depot Magic. In it, he got pretty controversial. Widely celebrated contemporaneous performers and performing practices, such as tricks involving the mouth and expectoration, including needle swallowing and button biting, were written off as basically disgusting.
Leat suggested that their practitioners should certainly reconsider including them in their acts. Today we have a different view about folks such as Houdini and Malini, and some of their specialties. One can only imagine what Leat might have thought about what is called “shock magic” today.
There is one debate that Leat wrote about in the book, however, that remains especially relevant in modern times, the apparatus question. Do the benefits of using lots of fancy-looking apparatus in one’s act outweigh the drawbacks?