About Iridology Charts
If eyes are the windows to the soul, iridologists claim that the irises are the windows to your medical history. After examining the myriad of marks and pigments in the human iris, iridologists compare their findings to a handy chart that identifies any medical abnormalities or concerns. But for the patients, this practice can provide, at best, questionable results.
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History
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As the story goes, Hungarian physician Ignatz von Peczely (1826 to 1911) saved an owl with a broken leg when he was a child. While tending the owl back to health, he noticed a streak in one of the owl's eyes. Decades later, Peczely was treating a patient with a broken leg and noticed a similar streak in the man's eye. Augendiagnostik, or "eye diagnosis," managed to earn some adherents in Germany. But in the 1950s, the practice, dubbed iridology, developed a following in the United States after an American chiropractor began to provide classes.
Theories/Speculation
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Iridologists propose that the color, texture and location of pigment specks in the eye can help diagnose disease and illness, or even outline the patient's surgical history. To that end, charts have been constructed that detail what parts of the eye correspond to which illnesses or part of the body. Bernard Jensen, the chiropractor who introduced iridology to America, claimed that the practice can reveal more diagnostic information that typical Western medicine.
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Types
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In one early chart (circa 1930s), the inner iris was said to correspond to the health of the stomach, while the outer iris reflected the health of the brain. Many modern charts divide the the eye into several dozen zones, all of which correspond to a specific organ or ailment. The practice of iridology, however, is not at all regulated by the United States or Canada. Consequentially, no one iridology chart is officially recognized to be the standard.
Identification
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Early practitioners simply used a flashlight or a magnifying glass, although these tools were later replaced by cameras and slit-lamp microscopes. Computer programs now exist that analyze the iris of the eye. Unfortunately for iridologists, consistently identifying the unique marks of a human iris is no easy task. Some advocates of the practice have slowly realized that different angles of light, as it entered the eye, could radically alter the iris' color and appearance from one examination to the next, and any diagnosis was thereby compromised.
Expert Insight
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In the world of alternative medicine, iridology is one of the practices most easily tested for accuracy. Multiple scientific studies have concluded that iridology can diagnosis a person's medical condition no better than random chance. In one study, no iridologists could distinguish between 39 patients with gallbladder disease and 39 patients without. The wider medical community unanimously agrees that iridology has no basis in fact.
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Resources
- Photo Credit ClinicalIridology.com
