A revolutionary new health centre combining modern and ancient medical practices is to open in Ayr due to a doctor's determination, explains MARIAN PALLISTER.

ACUPUNCTURE is as old as civilised man. Energy is as old as the universe. As we approach the millennium, we may at last benefit from a marriage between the ancient medicinal art of acupuncture and a channelling of the forces of energy in a method of treatment. The research which has led to this breakthrough is the stuff of which thrillers are constructed, involving brilliant mind, jealousy, and sabotage. Only the persistence of some dedicated and far-seeing orthodox and alternative practitioners has made it possible at last for people with the degenerative diseases which plague the late twentieth century to see a glimmer of hope.

Now the world-renowned complementary therapist, Jan de Vries, is about to open a revolutionary new health centre in Ayr where this healing force will be one of the many therapies available to patients. His enthusiasm for any advance in naturopathic treatments, burns as brightly as ever after forty years in practice, and he says with conviction: ''This is the medicine of the future.''

During a research project in Holland, de Vries stumbled across the therapy in practice. He says: ''We had several patients who were suffering conditions such as muscular dystrophy, multiple sclerosis, bad rheumatism, and some very severe ME cases. At the end of my research work, I saw that some of these people made great improvements, some of them remarkable improvement. I started to inquire what they had done, because I did not believe it was all the result of what I had done. Several told me they had heard through the media of Dr William Brooker in New Zealand, who had a particular method which they found beneficial.''

He learned that Brooker was using a method of restoring broken energy in the body which both he

and scientists had been trying to investigate for years. ''It was too simple to be

true, but nevertheless it worked,'' says de Vries. Brooker had perfected his method by linking patients to a transistor through particular acupuncture pressure points. ''He worked on energy points in the body and once the energy blockage was freed, patients experienced improvement,'' de Vries explained.

Sadly, Brooker died almost as soon as de Vries got on the trail of this exciting development. Undaunted, de Vries approached scientists with Brooker's ideas. These researchers tested a more scientific machine based on Brookers's principles in hospitals in London and showed that they could actually break through a virus and restore energy flow. It was then that they called de Vries back into the equation to show them which acupuncture points Brooker had used.

De Vries experimented with the machine, and has treated a number of patients with it. Once he saw the potential for healing, he realised his seven British clinics could not handle the volume of patients who would want to benefit by it. He decided to incorporate the treatment in the facilities offered by the new health care centre which will open on August 18 in Ayr's Wellington Square, and to train specialists in the method to operate from his other clinics.

Delving further into the history of this theory of restoring energy, de Vries found it had been investigated by a number of doctors throughout this century. Most significantly, the American Royal Raymond Rife was honoured on November 20, 1931, by 44 of the US's most respected medical authorities with a banquet dedicated to ''The End of All Diseases''.

By 1939, most of these distinguished doctors and scientists were denying they had ever met the man. Rife, whose technology is still commonly used in optics, electronics, radiochemistry, biochemistry, ballistics, and aviation, worked for Zeiss Optics, the US Government, and several private benefactors. He built the world's first virus microscope and identified the human cancer virus in 1920. He then discovered certain frequencies could destroy viruses, just as certain sounds can destroy a crystal glass.

Rife's problem was that his discovery of the therapeutic value of energy frequency was too successful: it threatened the newly wealthy pharmaceutical companies and the doctors who made their fortunes through prescribing modern drugs. His simple electronic therapy was sabotaged and the theory was not resurrected until the 1980s when crude forms of it began to reappear. What modern doctors did not solve was through which points of the body the energy flow should be channelled. Brooker discovered this vital link

and British doctors assisted by de Vries have refined the technique, marrying the ancient Chinese acupuncture points with the gentle pulsing of an electronic flow.

This marriage of ancient and modern is the essence of what de Vries wanted to present in his new health centre. He says: ''I wanted to set up a centre where orthodox doctors and alternative practitioners could work together, and I have trained people to use this machine to help people who have come to the end of their tether because of degenerative illness. It is properly a complementary centre.'' There will be a GP, a gynaecologist, the Russian sports medicine expert Dr Leonid Gissen and his wife Dr Ella Gissen, as

well as practitioners from

many of the complementary disciplines. It will

also be a centre of teaching and research, and will house an extensive library of orthodox and complementary texts.

One of the many areas in which de Vries believes the energy therapy will be of value is that of the senses. He explains in his book The Five Senses (Mainstream, #7.99p) that touch, smell, taste, hearing, and vision can be affected when their energy flow is disturbed. ''The first thing you look at when a baby is born is that the senses are OK. The senses are the first indication of something wrong, and this machine can help achieve a basic balancing of energy.''

De Vries says: ''The scenario has changed from the thirties. There is now a more open mind to this sort of medicine. I have a letter from a top consultant at the Royal Free Hospital in London who asked me show them how to clear a patient with this method. That has never happened before.'' It is interesting to note it was at the Royal Free in the early fifties that an outbreak of ME among doctors and nurses was labelled as hysteria.

Things have indeed changed. De Vries says orthodox doctors all over the world have expressed interest in the new therapy. ''The honest, genuine doctor is not against it at all, he says,

but he adds significantly: ''There are powers that be who are, for commercial reasons, and I dare to say that publicly. This is the only opposition there is, whereas in Holland, France and Germany, they have seen that a lot of alternative methods work and that is all they

are interested in. That is why so many hospitals in Britain now have acupuncture units, and why osteopathy is to be recognised by the NHS.''

The new centre and the new therapy, which each bring together the ancient and the modern, are the fulfilment of a dream for de Vries. He says: ''I have aimed for this for the past 10 years of my life because we have to come to an integrated medicine, where the patient will benefit, not the doctor or the practitioner. To bring these ancient methods, which have shown to be of use, together with the modern ones is only common sense.''