AGPAOA - Psychic Surgeon

A Filipino Spiritualist healer, born in 1939, who claimed to perform surgery with his bare hands without anesthetic. To perform psychic surgery Agpaoa passed his hand across the area to be operated, and an incision appeared. He operated either with his fingers or a pair of scissors, and the wound appeared to suture instantaneously without scarring.

As with similar psychic surgery in Brazil, such operations were highly controversial. Early reports, were most positive, but later studies have condemned Agapoa and his colleagues as clever conjurers. For example, in his book Flim-Flam! James Randi pointed out that when Agpaoa needed to have his own appendix removed, he had the operation at a San Francisco hospital, although there were scores of other psychic surgeons in the Philippines. In fact, Agpaoa was treated in a hospital for a stroke that he died from in 1982.