Zé Arigó (pseudonym of José Pedro de Freitas 18 October 1921 – 11 January 1971) was a faith healer and proponent of psychic surgery.
He claimed to have performed psychic surgery with his hands or with simple kitchen utensils while in a mediumistic trance, therefore he was also known as the Surgeon of the Rusty Knife.
Zé Arigó was born José Pedro de Freitas on a farm located 6 kilometers from Congonhas do Campo, in the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil.
One day he felt that the voice that had been pursuing him took over his body, and he had a vision of a bald man, dressed in a white apron and supervising a team of doctors and nurses in an enormous operating room.
His reputation soared and spread throughout Brazil after it was alleged that he had removed a cancerous tumor from the lung of a well-known Brazilian senator.
[2] Magician and skeptic James Randi considered the psychic surgery of Arigó to be the result of sleight of hand trickery.