John Mayo lets out a chuckle when I ask him if he's a real-life Dr Dolittle, writes KATHERINE MacALISTER. The 58-year-old can't talk with the animals but he can communicate with them. Somehow.

He says: "I can put animals to sleep just by using my hands. I don't know how I do it but I can."

But his main concern is human beings - and he claims to have performed mini-miracles all over the country.

"You have to see it to believe it. If I can't explain it, how can you?" he asks.

His wife Hazel says: "He's still looking for the answers himself, but he isn't going to find them."

The former joiner gets about two calls a day from Oxfordshire, as he lives just over the border in Gloucestershire. And he will try to help anyone in need.

John hasn't always been a healer. In fact he didn't even know about his special power until Hazel was badly injured in an horrific car accident in 1994.

He drove straight to the hospital and was told she had severe head and back injuries and was fighting for her life.

But somehow she recovered and was sent home. Over the next six months her permanent migraine and leg pains drove her to distraction. Nothing seemed to ease the pain despite numerous operations and drugs and she lapsed into depression.

Then one evening John said he would try to help her. He says he got up, went over to her and placed his hands on her head. "I don't know why I did it," he muses. Within seconds, he says, her headache was gone.

But John refused to believe he had anything to do with it and put it down to coincidence.

A few weeks later his wife asked if he would just try to heal her knee. Reluctantly he said he'd give it a go and put his hands on her leg.

"I felt her knee moving under my hands. I broke out into a sweat and it felt as if all my energy was being drained. Then I had to let go," he says.

He claims her knee, which had been trapped at an angle, had straightened considerably.

John says: "I was amazed. I kept thinking, why me? I was to scared to try it out on anyone else for a while until we visited our niece and she had a really bad neck. I put my hands on it and then left. When we got home there was a message on the answerphone saying it was much better." From then on his reputation spread. People started tracking him down at work or home and begged him to help them.

He adds: "It got ridiculous. People were wandering through my factory looking for me with their old mother or a poorly dog."

And his wages started falling because he was spending two-thirds of his time healing.

He says: "I had to make a decision, either to limit my healing or take it up full time and charge for it."

"Every weekend and evening was taken up and it just got too much so I took it up professionally."

But to his credit he only charges £25, even if it means travelling to Newcastle.

"People keep asking why I'm not a millionaire by now because I've treated thousands of people. But it's not about money. I've got a gift to share," he explains. Once he was invited to a house party and a guest asked for healing. John placed his hand on the man, then another guest asked, and another one.

He recalls: "Eventually I asked how many people I was expected to heal that night. The host said 'Well, all of them, because they have all come to see you."

John didn't start healing animals until three years ago when, he says, he cured a horse of Stringholt, a nervous disease. He now travels around the country seeing up to five clients a day.

'I HAVEN'T FELT ANY PAIN SINCE'

Marinella Johnson, from Abingdon, approached professional healer John Mayo a year ago because her race horse just wasn't hitting form.

"Catch The Action was very highly strung, pawing the ground and kicking all the time. When he raced, he ran out of breath before the end," 40-year-old Marinella remembers. She was considering cutting her losses and selling the animal on, but instead she asked John to see if he could do anything.

John says: "I put him to sleep - I can do that, don't ask me how - and then placed my hands on him.

"I just felt that he was very, very nervous and needed to relax."

Marinella phoned a week afterwards to say he was much better and racing well.

Three months later Marinella asked if John could do something to heal problems she had in her mouth.

She recalls: "It was a last resort and I didn't believe he could do anything, despite what I'd seen because I'm an old cynic. I'd had mouth and teeth problems since I was a child and was resigned to the pain."

When John saw her, her face was inflamed and she had abscesses under her teeth. She has seen numerous dentists but the problems kept re-occurring. He says: "I put my hands on her jaw and felt pins and needles going up my arms. She said the pain vanished instantly and the abscesses healed."

"I haven't felt any pain since," she claims. "Believe me I'm more surprised than anyone."

Then a few months ago, she twisted her ankle and was off work. John went to see her and she says he healed her ankle. She was back at work the next day. I don't know how he does it, but it's a life-saver," Marinella said. PROFESSOR REMAINS A SCEPTIC

Professor Vincent Marks has spent his life in medical research and dismisses healing through the power of hands or spirit as nothing more than chance.

Prof Marks, who is spokesman for the charity HealthWatch and is also Dean of Medicine at the University of Surrey, says there is no proven scientific research about the success of 'healing'.

He says: "The majority of illnesses we have are self-limiting and some have a psychological element. Without subjecting this man, or any other so-called healer, to rigorous and expensive scientific studies, and proving his powers, I have to remain a sceptic.

"The majority of investigations into this sort of thing which have been carried out have found that the success rates have been no better than chance.

"Maybe I'm doing a disservice by introducing scepticism but most people who believe in a scientific basis for medicine do not go in for this sort of thing."

The BMA - British Medical Association - said it had never looked at the efficacy of complementary therapies, only at the regulation of practitioners and their training.

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