The method itself causes lasting mental damage in victims proportional to the intensity of exposure. There is very little evidence pertaining to the effectiveness of torture for interrogation purposes. The victims could see each drop coming and, after a long duration of time, were gradually driven frantic to the point of insanity, usually because they were led to believe that a hollow or severe ulcer would develop there, or as a (sometimes combined) result of prolonged restraint under irritating conditions, isolation, or the humiliation of being tortured publicly. They would be driven insane while bystanders watched, mocked, and laughed at them. The victim would be stripped of their clothes, shown to the public, then tortured.

Other suggestions say that the term 'Chinese water torture' was invented merely to grant the method a sense of ominous mystery. Having observed how drops of water falling one by one on a stone gradually created a hollow, he applied the method to the human body. Hippolytus de Marsiliis is credited with the invention of a form of water torture. The escape entailed Harry 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 Fu Manchu subjected his victims to various ingenious tortures, such as the wired jacket). It may have been popularised by the predicament escape Chinese Water Torture Cell (a feat of escapology introduced in Berlin at Circus Busch on September 13, 1910).

'Chinese water torture' is mentioned in the 1892 short story 'The Compromiser' suggesting some public familiarity with the term by that date. This form of torture was first described by Hippolytus De Marsiliis in Italy in the 15th or 16th century. The pattern of the drops is often irregular, and the cold sensation jarring, which causes anxiety as a person tries to anticipate the next drip.

The process causes fear and mental deterioration in the subject. A reproduction of a Chinese water torture apparatus at Berlin-Hohenschönhausen MemorialĬhinese water torture or a 'dripping machine' is a mentally painful process in which cold water is slowly dripped onto the scalp, forehead or face for a prolonged period of time.

Houdini water torture