Arigo: Surgeon of the Rusty Knife,

This book is about a Brazilian individual - untrained in any form of medicine. Yet under possession mainly by the diseased spirit of a German doctor, he performs miraculous and incredulous cures. His forte is an eye examination with a knife. He performs various operations using totally unsterile techniques yet there is no bleeding or infection. The author vouchers for the accuracy of the incredible phenomena. Read this and make of it what you will. Fascinating and truly out of this world

I first read this book about 25 years ago and to this day it remains one of the most significant books I've read. It is well enough written, but the value is in the stunning details of Arigo's activities, so expertly and overwhelmingly documented that you would have to be a real fool to doubt the truth of it, and yet that is what that part of your awareness still susceptible to conventional science would have you do. Therein lies the importance of this book. Never have I been confronted with information so difficult to believe, yet so convincingly documented. I don't remember ever seeing any reference to Arigo in the North American press, yet he was second only to Pelee, the soccer star, in Brazilian newspapers until his death. The Brazilian Medical Association was after him for practicing medicine without a licence, but they were thwarted by the facts that 1] he never accepted payment and 2] they couldn't find one case where the patient's condition was apparently worsened by Arigo's treatment. When he was jailed, they had to jail him in a nearby village, not his own, and even then the jailers would not lock his cell door, but left it open so Arigo could minister to all the local villagers. Tha Catholic Church was also after him, but apparently gave up - Arigo's assistant was a member of the clergy sent to investigate him who stayed to help. The drugs prescribed were unusual in that they were administered in unusually large doses and ranged from the very recently discovered to the long out of use. This gives some credence to the information (learned while Arigo was under hypnosis) that the doctor guiding Arigo was a German surgeon who had died some time earlier, before he had the opportunity to right some wrong he felt he had committed during his life. You really should read this unique story.

I read this book in 1977 during a trip to the US. As I see the book here and I read some superficial opinions coming from Randi's admirers(!), I feel compelled to comment. Arigo was a well known healer in Brazil, his healing work through surgery, allways free of charge, went on for many years, hundreds of people a day, till he died in a car accident in 1971. John Fuller's book, writen after his visit to Brazil with Dr. Andrija Puharich to meet, talk to Arigo and see personally what was happening around that healer work is a very good piece of research, well documented. Anyone who is interested in phenomena that shows facts that science is far from explaining, will get a precious source of information from John Fuller's book. Even though skepticism comes about when we face cases like Arigo, there is an unending source of documentation about his life and the authenticity of his work. Scientists, politicians, wealthy people as well hundreds of thousands of simple people were operated by him. Superficial opinions from anyone who hasn't a clue about what they are talking will not invalidate cases so extensively proven true like Arigo. John G. Fuller's book is more than worth reading. Healers like Arigo exist, spread all over Brazil, anyone with time, will and interest can do what Mr. Fuller did so well, research and write about them.

According to this book and other information available on the Web: Arigo was a Brazilian peasant, with no formal medical training, or other schooling past 3rd grade. He was able to diagnose and cure virtually any malady. He did diagnosis at a glance and prescribed modern pharmaceuticals -- often in combinations and doses that made no sense in conventional terms, but which worked in virtually all cases where this could be followed up by investigators. Arigo performed operations of kinds which have apparently never been duplicated by conventional physicians. For example, he commonly excised even those metastatic tumors that extensively infiltrated vital organs, amid blood vessels and nerves. He regularly removed cataracts with a kitchen knife by scraping the cornea and removing the lens -- and his patients were able to see well afterwards. Most operations were done within 5 to 60 seconds, without anesthesia or antiseptics, yet without pain or damage or infection to patients. He commonly treated up to 300 patients/day. This sounds like a fairy tale, but was extensively documented by highly respected physicians and other scientists from America (led by Henry Puharich) and Brazil. They made detailed films, and performed on-the-spot diagnoses and examination of patients before and after treatment by Arigo. His "instant" diagnoses agreed with their diagnoses at least 96% of the time.This is not only among the best-documented records of psychic healing, but among the most intruiging sets of evidence for psychic phenomena in general. Instead of just rehashing the same o same o notions of telepathy, clairvoyance, etc. it opens up entire new phenomena. In particular, it suggests a radically new perspective on the nature of disease and healing. Granted, this perspective has something in common with notions of the so-called etheric body and how it can be operated on -- an approach common in Brazil, where physicians commonly combine so-called spiritist practices with modern medicine. (But Arigo's skill and the intelligence underlying it went far far beyond that of his peers.) This is the so-called intellectual Karcec school of medicine, and is reputedly practiced by hundreds if not thousands of physicians who have graduated from top ranking medical schools [including American and European schools] and who publish regularly in professional journals.The Kardec approach involves consultation with spirit physicians -- discarnate beings that were allegedly once alive on Earth -- through mediums. Arigo was unusual in that he was his own medium. His spirit helpers either gave him advice or used him like a puppet to perform treatments -- at which time he was in a trance. Although this sounds extraordinarily far fetched, the documentation is good enough to warrant serious thought. Alas, Arigo was killed in a car wreck before his work could be studied in enough detail for his methods to be passed on to other healer

An incredible saga of a peasant who, through channelling, becomes a healing force never before unleashed. The power and drama of this book has never, in my mind, been equaled.