Throughout the mid seventies members of the Peoples Temple travelled across various American states in convoys of buses proselytising their socialist message and recruiting members, mostly poor disenfranchised US citizens. The Temple also had many young educated and politically active adherents. Deborah Layton (Seductive Poison 1999) describes the sermons, which included Jones' performances as a healer. On occasions Jones would call out the name of a newcomer (whom he had been told about), almost as question - as if he were received their name telepathically, rather than through more prosaic methods.   Most dramatic were the cancer cures; miracle healings that involved members of the congregation who thought they were ill, choking themselves while Jones' or an assistant (often his wife Marceline), through deft sleight of hand produced carefully prepared and concealed one week old chicken giblets in paper napkins. Apparently the 'cancer', coughed up, rotten and stinking. Archive footage shows the effect on the congregation was tumultuous.   The sermons were often melodramas, and passionate, political polemics against capitalism. Jones also attacked the mainstream churches and the bible.   The cancer healings paralleled many other healing tricks prevalent at the time. Most notoriously documented in John G Fullers classic book Arigo: Surgeon of the Rusty Knife concerning psychic surgery (in Brazil and the Phillipines), where the patient is apparently cut open, while the surgeon (using sleight of hand) is seen to produce organic, bloody matter from the wound. These types of sleight of hand tricks have had a long historical association with religious figures. Originally practised by shamans, where their trickster practices were actually seen as further evidence of their extraordinary powers.   Reconstruction: Jim Jones, Portrayed by Graeme Edler   Many, who knew the cancer cures were a sham, approved of the method, as a way of dramatically introducing new members into the Temple, where they could be exposed to the groups real theology, with Jones' blend of socialism, humanitarianism and charisma.   Jones' repertoire also extended to apparent mind reading. His aides would be directed to scavenge through the rubbish of a member of the congregation, providing him with personal details he would surprise the individual with.   Played as spontaneous events the sermons and healing were in fact carefully managed and staged performances, representations in their own right.   For those Temple members in the congregation who did not see, or chose not to see, the artifice; fiction substituted reality. With disastrous consequences in Jonestown a few years later.