Psychic surgery

What it is

Psychic surgery is a claimed healing in which someone appears to open a patient's body with bare hands, draw out diseased tissue and leave the skin unbroken. Investigators describe the same event as medical fraud built on conjuring: what is displayed as tumour is usually animal material, the blood is dye or animal blood, and no cut has been made. Regulators and doctors call it fakery. Stage magicians recognise hand movements they use themselves for entertainment. Even sympathetic writers have conceded that trickery was common among practitioners. The danger is indirect: a sick person who trusts the display may put off treatment that could help. Two centres of the practice appeared in the mid-20th century, the Philippines and Brazil.

Where it comes from

The practice surfaced in spiritist circles in two countries at roughly the same time, and each took its own road. Observers in the Philippines noticed it in the 1940s, performed as a matter of course by Eleuterio Terte, who trained others beside his pupil Tony Agpaoa. English-speaking readers met it in 1959 through a book by Ron Ormond and Ormond McGill, who named it fourth dimensional surgery and admitted they were unsure what to think. Brazil's beginnings are murkier: spiritual healers were at work by the late 1950s, many of them inside Kardecist spiritism. Older tales of a body opened without a scar exist as well, including the bearded Mala Cosa in an account given to the Spanish chronicler Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca.

How it is done

A session tends to run to a pattern. Fingertips are pressed on the skin of the area being treated, the hands seem to sink in without pain, and blood appears to run. Material said to be diseased tissue or a foreign object is then shown, the place is wiped, and the skin is displayed unmarked. Most sessions involve no cutting at all, although a minority do, and the absence of pain has been put down to a hypnotic state. Where evil spirits are widely feared, an object such as glass may be presented as something a spirit planted inside the patient.

Tools and materials

For the most part the work was done with bare hands and no instrument. Where props figure in the record, investigators found animal tissue standing in for tumours, red dye or animal blood for blood, and cotton or small packets handled during the session. A few Brazilian operators injected a brown liquid. Yoshiaki Omura noted that Zé Arigó used ordinary kitchen knives in makeshift rooms, and that the clamping and closing were left to licensed surgeons or nurses. Some practitioners cut the skin for real with unsterilized blades.

What it is for

People came hoping to be rid of cancer, tumours and other serious disease, and the display was arranged to convince them the illness had been taken away. Practitioners framed the work as healing, sometimes as a miracle of God, sometimes as the act of a spirit doctor working through them. Critics say the practical result runs the other way: patients with diagnosed conditions may postpone or give up ordinary care, and death may follow from that delay. The American Cancer Society found no evidence of objective benefit in the treatment of any condition.

Who does it

The operators were self-taught or apprenticed healers rather than surgeons. Terte taught others; Agpaoa, his pupil, was linked to the Christian Spiritist Union of the Philippines. Brazilian healers often described themselves as channels for the spirits of doctors who had died, notably one called Fritz, who was fictitious; Zé Arigó, Edson Queiroz and Rubens Farias Jr each said they carried this same doctor. João de Faria, known as João de Deus, later drew crowds at Abadiânia in Goiás. Alex Orbito became known in the United States through the actress Shirley MacLaine.

What people believe

Two thought-worlds lie behind the act. In Brazil many healers worked inside Kardecist spiritism, a large spiritualist movement, and said they acted only as conduits for spirits of deceased physicians, so the healer's own skill mattered less than the spirit's. In the Philippines spiritist congregations mixed Christian language with spirit belief, and where such spirits are feared, an object shown to a patient could be explained as something a spirit left in the body. The performance relies on these frames: it makes sense to someone who already accepts that spirits take an interest in sickness.

How scholars and sceptics see it

Doctors, science writers and conjurors have all examined the practice. James Randi called it a confidence trick and said the hand movements are obvious to anyone used to watching close-up magic; Milbourne Christopher watched healers at work and reported the same. William Nolen's 1974 book uncovered many cases of fraud, and John Taylor and Terence Hines treat fraud as the likely explanation in every operation. Medical opinion holds that any improvement is a placebo effect. The US Federal Trade Commission called it a total hoax, and the British Columbia Cancer Agency advised ill people against it.

Compare and confuse

The nearest relative is stage conjuring: the same hand work, done openly for entertainment, shows what the healer does in private. A later offshoot was psychic dentistry, promoted in 1970s America by Willard Fuller, who was said to make fillings appear, turn silver to gold or straighten teeth; a dentist who checked some patients found tobacco stains where gold was claimed, and one woman had forgotten a filling she already had. The Brazilian variant is different again, resembling qigong, shiatsu and chiropractic manipulation more than the Philippine bare-hand act.

Law and persecution

In 1975 the US Federal Trade Commission declared the practice nothing but a total hoax, and the judge who granted an order against agencies selling tours to practitioners called it pure and unmitigated fakery. Canada charged Alex Orbito with fraud in June 2005; the case was dropped in January 2006. Brazil has prosecuted at least one celebrity healer, João de Faria, who was convicted of rape while many similar accusations remain outstanding.

Today

The bare-hand demonstrations that drew foreign visitors in the 1970s no longer make headlines, but the model survives wherever a healer claims to lift illness out of the body. Abadiânia in Goiás became a destination for seekers, and the conviction of João de Faria has been recorded. The image has also passed into fiction and television: it appears in Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude, in the 1989 film Penn & Teller Get Killed, and in a 1989 episode of Unsolved Mysteries. Criss Angel restaged it on his show to show how it may be done.

Questions people ask about Psychic surgery

Good reading and sources

• Psychic surgery on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• More photos on Wikimedia CommonsPhotos and video
• Wikidata recordOpen data