Stevens has been living for 20 years with multiple sclerosis, which has confined him to a wheelchair and caused his energy levels to collapse.

However, he believes there is hope for the 10,000 Scots who suffer from the disease.

“An Italian doctor has turned round the whole ­theory on how MS develops,” said Stevens.

“As a result, I’m now looking to embark upon a new treatment that I believe could produce some fantastic results.”

Dr Paolo Zamboni, a professor of medicine at the University of Ferrara in Italy, believes that MS is not, as widely believed, an auto­immune condition, but a ­vascular disease.

The surgeon began investigating the illness in 1995 when his wife displayed symptoms of MS and he found repeated references, dating back a century, to excess iron as a possible cause.

Dr Zamboni uses ultrasound to examine the blood vessels leading to and from the brain and claims that, in more than 90% of cases of people with multiple sclerosis, including his wife, the veins draining blood from the brain were malformed or blocked.

His conclusion is that iron damages the blood vessels, allowing the heavy metal, along with other unwelcome cells, to cross the crucial barrier that keeps blood and ­cerebrospinal fluid separate.

In MS, immune cells cross the blood-brain barrier, where they destroy myelin, a crucial sheathing on nerves that access body function.

“I’m so excited,” said Stevens, who lives in Hogganfield in Glasgow. “This news seems to have come out of nowhere. But it all seems to make sense.”

Dr Zamboni believes that if the jugular and azygos veins are cleared, then the symptoms of MS can be reduced.

Stevens’s immediate plan is to have an ultrasound scan, which will reveal if his veins are indeed blocked by iron deposits.

“If this is the case I will undergo a simple operation to unclog the veins and get blood flowing normally again. It’s a procedure similar to angioplasty, in which a catheter is threaded into the groin and up into the arteries, where a balloon is inflated to clear the blockages.”

Dr Zamboni’s wife, who had the surgery three years ago, has not had a recurrence since.

Meanwhile, small-scale studies have been carried out in Italy. In a group of 65 patients with relapsing-remitting MS (the most common form) who underwent surgery, the number of active lesions in the brain fell ­sharply, to 12% from 50%; in the two years after surgery.

Sceptics warn the evidence is too scant and speculative to start rewriting medical textbooks. They say that MS sufferers should not rush off to get the surgery – nicknamed the “liberation procedure” – until more research is done.

Furthermore, there are doubts as to whether the surgery will prove an effective treatment for primary progressive MS, the form suffered by Stevens.

However, he reckons there is no point in wasting time.

“Life is too short,” he says. “And for so many people with MS, their quality of life is reduced. I’m not about to wait around for a few years while this theory is tested and tested, only to prove it correct. I want to take action now.”

Stevens’s wife, Caroline, is a dietician who has also spent years researching into MS.

She said: “I’ve looked at all the usual probable reasons why MS develops, whether it’s a viral problem or dietary. I’ve looked at the chemicals in Tim’s blood. We’ve tried every natural remedy imaginable.”