Spectral Appendectomy

In officially Catholic Brazil, spiritualists are a numerous sect. Last week Brazil's spiritualists had Brazil in a dither.

In the town of Pindamonhangaba (70% of whose 7,000 people are spiritualists) some 40 witnesses sweltered in a pitch-dark seance chamber. Among them were policemen, newsmen and three physicians, who had taken impressive precautions against trickery.

Strapped to an improvised operating table lay Andre di Bernardi, a spiritualist suffering from an inflamed appendix. While a phonograph played Gounod's Ave Maria, mediums "materialized" Dr. Luiz Gomes do Amaral, who died 19 years ago. The patient waited, fully conscious and quivering. He felt clammy hands on his body, a tingling scratch on his abdomen. A soft voice reassured him that he would feel no pain. Water splashed in a pail by his side as if an invisible surgeon were washing invisible hands.

The phonograph droned in the grisly darkness for an hour and 50 minutes. At last the lights went up. In a jar of alcohol weltered a fine appendix. On the patient's belly "was a neatly closed incision. Ten days later, X rays proved that Spiritualist Bernardi's appendix had actually been removed.

There were outbursts from pulpit and press. Monsenhor Joao Azevedo, priest of the straying sheep of Pindamonhangaba, denounced the spiritualists as cheats and frauds, offering to prove that one of the witness doctors, under cover of music and darkness, had removed the appendix himself. But the spiritualists prepared to welcome hordes of new converts. Their Pindamonhangaba center was deluged with requests for the painless professional services of ghostly Dr. Amaral.

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