Psychic surgery

Psychic surgery, a pseudoscience constituting medical fraud, is when a practitioner creates the illusion of performing surgery with his or her bare hands and uses trickery, fake blood, and animal parts to convince the patient that the diseased lesions were removed and that the incision spontaneously healed.

It has been denounced by the US Federal Trade Commission as a "total hoax", and the American Cancer Society maintains that psychic surgery may cause needless death by keeping the ill away from life-saving medical care. Medical professionals and skeptics classify it as sleight of hand and any positive results as a placebo effect. It first appeared in the Spiritualist communities of the Philippines and Brazil in the middle of the 20th century, and it has taken different paths in those two countries.

Although psychic surgery varies by region and practitioner, it usually follows some common lines. Without the use of a surgical instrument, a practitioner will press the tips of his/her fingers against the patient's skin in the area to be treated. The practitioner's hands appear to penetrate into the patient's body painlessly and blood seems to flow. The practitioner will then show organic matter or foreign objects apparently removed from the patient's body, clean the area, and then end the procedure with the patient's skin showing no wounds or scars.

Most cases do not involve actual surgery although some practitioners make real incisions. In regions of the world where belief in evil spirits is prevalent, practitioners will sometimes exhibit objects, such as glass, explaining that the foreign bodies were placed in the patient's body by evil spirits.

Accounts of psychic surgery started to appear in the Spiritualist communities of the Philippines and Brazil in the mid-1900s.

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