Psychic surgery

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Psychic surgery is a medical fraud in which practitioners create the illusion of performing surgery with their bare hands and use sleight of hand, fake blood, and animal parts to convince the patient that diseased lesions have been removed and that the incision has spontaneously healed.^[1][2][3] The technique may fool the general public, but it can be observed by experienced stage magicians, who use the same sleight of hand techniques for entertainment.^[1]

The US Federal Trade Commission described psychic surgery as a "total hoax".^[2] It has also been described as fraud,^[2] fakery,^[2] deceitful,^[4] irrational,^[5] charlatanry,^[6] and quackery.^[6][7] Even supporters have been forced to admit that sleight-of-hand tricks were "widely used" and that charlatans were common and miracles unlikely.^[4] Psychic surgery may cause needless death by keeping the ill away from life-saving medical care.^[3] Medical professionals and skeptics classify it as sleight of hand and any positive results as a placebo effect.^{[8][9][10][11]}

Psychic surgery first appeared in the spiritualist communities of the Philippines and Brazil in the middle of the 20th century; it has taken different paths in those two countries.^[12]