Shamanic / Ritual Healing

‘Psychic surgeons’ ‘reached into’ patients’ bellies bare-handed to pull out ‘tumours’, drawing planeloads of American patients in the 1970s; the FTC ruled it ‘pure and unmitigated fakery’ and barred agencies from promoting such trips; the ‘tissue’ was mostly animal offal and blood.

Claiming possession by ‘a German doctor’s spirit’, he operated with an unsterilised fruit knife as hundreds queued daily; US doctor Puharich observed but had no controlled data.

Claimed to ‘heal’ millions and appeared on Oprah in 2010; arrested in Dec 2018 on hundreds of women’s sexual-assault accusations and sentenced from 2019 to over a hundred years total.

Legislated recognition and a regulatory council for ~200,000 ‘sangoma’ and other traditional healers; an estimated 60%+ of South Africans have consulted them.

The WHO and India built a global traditional-medicine centre to drive evidence research; the WHO estimates 170 member states use traditional medicine.

A 23-year-old with epilepsy and psychosis underwent 67 church-approved exorcisms, stopped medication and food, and died; her parents and two priests were convicted of negligent homicide (suspended). The model for ‘The Exorcism of Emily Rose’.

393 coronary patients randomised to prayed-for or control; the prayed-for group did better on some complication measures; critics note only a few of 29 measures were significant (multiple comparisons). Harvard’s larger 2006 STEP replication was null (see Regeneration).

Amazon shamans’ ayahuasca ritual is Peruvian heritage; the same class of substances (DMT, psilocybin) showed significant antidepressant effects in Hopkins and Imperial RCTs, published in JAMA Psychiatry 2020.

‘Masters’ like Yan Xin gave ‘power-emission lectures’ in stadiums where crowds reported pains vanishing; ‘healer’ Hu Wanlin ‘treated’ people with huge doses of mirabilite, killing several, and was jailed 15 years for illegal practice in 2000, re-arrested after release in 2013.