Iridology

Iridology, also sometimes known as iridodiagnosis, is a medical practice with which doctors and others study the eyes of a patient to try to determine major problems in other parts of the human body. As such, it is not a treatment but a form of diagnosis.

The first time that iridological practices were used, although the name was not coined until much later, was in the Chiromatica Medica, written by Philippus Meyeus and first published in 1665. It was reprinted five years later, and again in 1691, and mentioned some doctors looking into people's eyes to see whether there are any other problems with the patient.

The idea was more formalized by the Hungarian physician Ignatz von Péczely who used the German word Augendiagnostik which translates as “eye diagnosis.” The idea apparently came to him after he was treating a person for a broken leg and noticed particular streaks in the eye which were similar to those he had noticed in an owl that had a broken leg many years earlier. However, August von Péczely, the nephew of Ignatz von Péczely, rejected the idea as a myth at the First International Congress of Iridology, held in Brussels, Belgium, in October 2000.

Iridology continued in Germany where Pastor Felke, a homeopathist, established the Felke Institute in Gerlingen. However, many scientists dismissed the idea, although some researchers in recent times have suggested that there might be a number of nonvisual functions of the eye with Dr. D. A. Waniek, as recently as 1987, postulating that this might well be the case.

During the 1950s, there was increased popularity for iridology in the United States, with Bernard Jensen, an American chiropractor, giving many classes on his method of diagnosis. Jensen had been critical of the exposure of the body to toxins and urged for natural foods to be used as detoxifiers, and claiming to be able to diagnose some aspects of bad diet by observing the eyes of patients. Jensen wrote about his theories in Iridology Simplified (2nd ed., 1980).

In 1979, the Journal of the American Medical Association allowed three iridologists to study photographs of irises to see whether they could identify kidney disease, and found their diagnoses were in disagreement with each other and inaccurate. This has not stopped the publication of a large number of books on iridology including the Canadian Journal of the Science and Practice of Iridology, and there is also the Israeli Center for Advances in Multidimensional Iridology. The 2nd International Congress of Iridology was held at Thessaloniki, Greece, in October 2001, the 4th International Congress of Applied Iridology was held on May 18–21, 2000, and the First Integrated Iridology Conference was held on March 9–11, 2001, in Sydney, Australia.