http://coombs.anu.edu.au/asia-pacific-magazine

The Asia-Pacific Magazine quarterly is published by the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University (ANU), Canberra ACT 0200, Australia.

---

|| Asia-Pacific Magazine home page || Board || Editorial Advisory Board || Notes for the Contributors || Current Issue || Past Issues || Subscription & Advertising Details || Asian Studies WWW Virtual Library || What's New in WWW Asian Studies || Asia-Pacific Conferences & Events ||

---

[Past issues of the Quarterly become available online approximately 12 months after their appearance in print.
Also, as a service to the Readers of the Asia-Pacific Magazine web site, email addresses and links to web-pages of the authors are provided whenever they are available.]

Asia-Pacific Magazine
No. 2 May 1996
pp. 23-24.

Clever Hoax or Natural Healing?

by Peter Raftos

Psychic surgery does not exist in a social vacuum in the Philippines. It has grown out of a highly complex array of largely indigenous beliefs and practices about sickness and healing, which draw on a range of cultures, from before the Spanish occupation to Catholicism to Western medical precepts.

"Native healers", as they are sometimes called, are to be found in every town and village. Given the poverty of most Filipinos, the expense of Western-type medicine and the cheapness of native healers and herbal remedies, these are by far the most popular source of treatment for illness.

The first documented case of psychic surgery was carried out in the late 1940s by Eleuterio Terte, who hailed from Pangasinan, a province to the west of Baguio City. Pangasinan has a reputation for powerful healers and, since healing skills are commonly believed to run in families, many healers claim to have at least some Pangasinanese ancestry, including the more recent healer Agpaoa, who claimed to have learnt some of his skills from Terte.

While sceptics and the faithful argue over the truth or otherwise of psychic surgery, Terte's daughter, Arsenia dela Cruz, has her own views. A healer who lives most of the year in Baguio City and her native Pangasinan, dela Cruz said that, while her father was able to open the body and cure the sick through the removal of diseased parts or foreign elements, none of the modern-day successors to his craft are truly able to do it.

Nevertheless, several modern-day healers have gained widespread recognition in the Philippines: Jun Labo, Alex Orbito and Tony Agpaoa. Considered the father of psychic surgery, Agpaoa, whose highly publicised international tours in the 1970s and 1980s brought the healers fame (or infamy), died in a car crash in 1991. Orbito runs a clinic from a back room in his travel agency attached to an hotel in downtown Manila. Jun Labo operates from the mountain city of Baguio (sometimes known as the "summer capital" of the Philippines, since many of the nation's wealthy and powerful escape to there from the heat of Manila during the dry season), in the central north of Luzon, the country's largest island.

Sometime mayor of Baguio, Labo runs the Nagoya Clinic with his son and Japanese wife, both of whom are apprentice healers. The clinic is a mixture of hotel -- guests can stay at the Nagoya Inn for a fee, but then one is closer to the healer, rather than finding alternative accommodation in town -- and chapel, where Christian, Buddhist and New Age iconography jostle for space near herbal remedies.

Like all Filipino healers, neither Labo nor Orbito charge a fee for their services. They believe that their healing powers come from God, that they are merely the vessel through which those powers operate, and that to charge for their services would lead to a weakening of their powers. However, donations are gratefully received, and all healers have sidelines to supplement their income, whether that is a hotel, a travel agency or -- for the poorer, less well-known healers -- humbler ventures such as running small variety stores.

Almost every day, travellers from places as diverse as the United States, Germany, Japan and Australia arrive in the Philippines in order to visit and perhaps receive treatment from the "psychic surgeons", also known as "bare-hand healers. Some of the visitors seek health, a cure from a long-term and perhaps incurable affliction; others have come seeking spiritual revelations; still others are merely curious, tourists visiting the healers much as they would visit any other attraction. It is even possible to organise package tours which include visits to the psychic surgeons and accommodation.

Healers tend to specialise in broad areas of treatment: some are experts on herbal remedies, while others may be masseurs or treat cases of witchcraft or attacks by spirit beings. While much of the beliefs which underpin the ways in which they identify an illness, its cause and the best course of treatment are either indigenous or based on Spanish Catholic folklore (the Philippines was a Spanish colony for roughly three hundred years), 20th century medical concepts and practices are not ignored. Thus, it is not uncommon to see a healer praying to Christ while taking "X-rays" with a piece of paper rendered translucent by magically-treated coconut oil, then holding the X-ray up to the light and diagnosing a case of attack by supernatural creatures.

Is it possible that chronic, perhaps incurable illnesses -- cancer, arthritis -- can be successfully treated by faith? That some people have the power to open up the human body, remove tumours or other infected matter, and then seal up the body without leaving so match as a scratch, all in a matter of seconds, and with nothing more than their bare hands?

Significantly, the removal of small objects to effect healing -- especially stones, bits of bamboo or dead insects -- while rare, is not unheard-of in the Philippines (such techniques have been used all over the world, from Africa to Papua New Guinea). In Western surgical techniques (and, of course, Filipino psychic surgery), it is usually biological material that is removed, rather than obviously foreign objects.

The term "surgery" is often used by observers to describe the techniques used by the healers. Patients strip to their underclothes, and then lie down on a table covered with a white sheet. The healer, who may be in a trance state, massages a particular spot on the body for a few seconds, until their hand appears to enter the still-conscious patient's body. Blood -- or some very similar red fluid -- wells up in the depression around the healer's hand. No more than a few seconds later, the healer pulls from the depression a small object which resembles biological matter, someone's "insides", which is dumped unceremoniously into a nearby bucket. The patient is wiped down, and all that remains from the surgery is a slight red mark. Then it's on to the next patient, while the first, having felt no more than slight discomfort during the whole procedure, rubs their head in amazement or smiles with the knowledge of a veteran.

The healers often tell the patient what is being removed: perhaps tumours, cysts, polyps or "excess calcium" -- treatment for a current sickness, or prevention of a possible future malady.

One striking aspect of the healers' treatment is the speed with which they operate: patients are only on the table for a matter of one or two minutes, and then it is on to the next one. In a single morning, a psychic surgeon can attend to several tour groups and individual tourists, perhaps fifty people.

Is psychic surgery a clever hoax, or is it real? The healers and their apologists do not make any claims for miracle cures: while there have been some apparent complete remissions of cancer or polio, any improvement in a patient's condition will, they say, generally come only gradually, after repeated treatment. Also, there are no accurate records available on the results of the treatments offered by the high-profile healers, so it cannot be claimed with any accuracy whether they have managed to cure, alleviate or worsen the health of their patients to any significant degree.

Then there is the question of whether or not the healers can literally open a body with their bare hands, stimulate healing or excise diseased parts, and then seal the body without leaving a wound. The converted say "yes", while the sceptical remain unconvinced. Even if the whole surgical procedure is a clever case of sleight-of-hand (material removed from patients often turns out to be pigs' blood or chicken entrails under laboratory scrutiny), it is possible that the theatrically-satisfying nature of the whole event (it is, after all, a good show) serves to trigger healing mechanisms within the patient. The stage presence or charisma of the healer may also be an aid here.

The possible triggering of the body's own abilities to heal through a theatrical, apparent surgery, may be related to the "placebo effect". In the latter case, medically inert substances are administered by a doctor or other health professional to a patient, who subsequently feels relief or even undergoes a degree of recovery from an ailment. It is thought that the patient's trust in their doctor or in medical science -- a kind of faith -- may induce healing where, theoretically, none should occur (or it should be much slower than that which does occur).

Many of the patients claim that the treatments do help alleviate the symptoms, or even provide a partial cure. If it is effective, then it may not be the actual techniques employed by the psychic surgeons that induce some degree of recovery but rather the atmosphere within which the whole procedure takes place which makes that procedure effective. And this may shed light on the practices of some Christian faith healers, particularly evangelists: perhaps there is something to it, after all.

Number of accesses made to this page since the counter was added to this document (10 May 1997):

(plus the times when this graphics file was not loaded by a browser)

Page last updated: 10 May 1997.