Morison Pill Box by Bill Tresslar

“Brothers, I am sorry I have no Morison Pill for curing the maladies of Society” (Francis Carlyle, 1843).

The Morison Pill Box is a piece of magic apparatus which is very much sought after and prized by collectors, yet it is a curious fact that the name is often misspelled, and sometimes has an incorrect designation as a “ball box” or “vase.” It is, in a sense, both of the latter, but it is not correct to refer to them as such for reasons which we shall see. Unfortunately, even some knowledgeable and educated writers fall into these errors, especially by spelling the name with two “R’s.”

One of the early descriptions of the box was by Professor Hoffman in Modern Magic (1876), and he spelled the name correctly because he lived in London at the appropriate period. On the other hand, the erudite Henry Ridgely Evans consistently misspelled the name, no doubt because being an American it was unfamiliar to him in this context.

The perpetuation of the errors seems to have arisen from the mistaken belief that the box was invented by someone named “Morrison” (the more common spelling of the name). Who it was that really invented this version of the apparatus seems to be lost in the past, but it was the second major improvement over the original simple “ball box.”

This is a very pretty version from Bill Tresslar with a snug fitting ball and shell which works well.

Effect: A gorgeous and very unique shaped vase is displayed. The solid ball is removed from the vase, shown all around and then vanished. The vase is again opened and the ball has reappeared inside the vase! At the end, the reappeared ball is dumped out of the vase entirely and tossed it in the air proving that it is the complete solid ball!

Please do not confuse this with a Ball Vase.

Text Source: Eric C. Lewis – Linking Ring, October, 1987

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