Psychic surgery is a form of surgery that is supposed to be a paranormal surgical practice done mainly in the Philippines and Brazil. Psychic doctors and psychic surgeons perform treatments. These doctors have claimed to have taken out such things as tumors from human bodies and other objects such as bones and pus, made through an incision. This incision is invisible, although fairly bloody, but painless and often done without any tools i.e. bare hands and without any type of painkiller or anesthetics.

Physic doctors state that they have magical and paranormal abilities. Some claim to do things such as raise the vibration of their hands to be able to pass through the patient’s tissue and make energy that is infected, into something physical. Skeptics argue with such theories and say that the hand has no more power than it has for everyone. There is also a lack of medical knowledge to support such statements although it is practiced in many countries around the world.

In the Philippines, psychic surgery dates back to the 1940s where Eleuterio Terte and his student Tony Agpaoa trained other budding psychic surgeons in this profession. These two and many others were in connection with a religious organization called Union Espiritista Christiana de Filipinas. In later years, the practice spread to the United States and some called it the fourth dimensional surgery. It was popularized by the psychic surgeon Alex Orbito and also by Andy Kaufman, a comedian who traveled to the Philippines to see a psychic surgeon for his problem of lung cancer. He claimed that the cancer had been removed but died later that year from metastatic carcinoma.

In Brazil, the history of this type of treatment is slightly obscure but in the 1950s, many spiritual doctors were practicing. Some doctors used a blade to make incisions whereas some used their bare hands. It is slightly different in Brazil as it is in the Philippines in the sense that practitioners used various forms of oriental techniques such as qi gong and shiatsu to help them with their psychic surgery.

There has been a lot of criticism to do with psychic surgery, most notably in the United States. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission stated in 1975 that it was nothing more than a hoax. It is a type of fakery and the fact that someone could operate on someone else with bare hands is impossible. Some state that it is nothing more than a magic trick where the surgeons seem to be using their bare hands but in fact it is a type of sleight-of-hand confidence trick.