Jose De Freitas Arigo

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Jose de Freitas, or 'Arigo' as he was affectionately known to his followers, astounded Brazil through the 1950s by his use of so-called 'psychic surgery'. He operated in completely insanitary conditions and his tools were highly unorthodox-table knives and scissors.

His ministry was begun with perhaps the strangest initiation rites in the history of faith healing. He was present at the bedside of a dying woman, who happened to be the wife of an acquaintance. Suddenly, this unlettered ex-miner from Conghonhas do Campo, with no instruction in medicine, moved to grasp a nearby kitchen knife and then, without further ado, plunged it straight into the stomach of the woman.

He then managed to extract a huge tumour from the stomach, only nearly to collapse after the realization of what he had done hit him. Later, a doctor found the tumour to have been a uterine tumour. Arigo claimed no memory of the incident. The patient, who had been considered near death, made a full recover}' and claimed to have felt no pain during the involuntary operation.

A yet more bizarre twist in the story was to follow. In a trance Arigo revealed that a German doctor, Adolphus Fritz (whose identity still remains unconfirmed), guided him in these unique operations by speaking into his right ear while the operations were conducted. Stranger still, Arigo claimed Fritz had died in Estonia in 1918. To compound this, Arigo once broke into fluent German when speaking to the German husband of a patient, under the influence of Fritz.

Twice jailed by the Brazilian authorities despite the avowal and support of his devoted followers, first in 1956 and again in 1964, Arigo's fame spread, and the sick flooded to his small house in Conghonhas do Campo. In 1968 a team of doctors saw him treat over a thousand patients.

They were led by the doctor Andrija Puharich, who was stirred by what he witnessed. He would watch Arigo stare solemnly at the patient and then make an impromptu diagnosis of his or her illness. This diagnosis would then invariably be found to be accurate by the team on investigation. After having told his friends that they would not see him again, he was found dead in a car crash.