Iridology

The iris
The iris is the greenish-yellow area surrounding the transparent pupil (showing as black). The white outer area is the sclera, the central transparent part of which is the cornea.

Iridology (irid from iris, -ology) is a type of alternative medicine. Practitioners of iridology examine the patterns, colors and other characteristics of stromal fibers of the iris. All of these are then matched to iris charts which divide the iris into many zones allegedly representing different parts of the human body. The iris is the only living tissue in the vertebrate body which can be easily seen in ambient light. Based on this unique position of the iris, iridologists maintain that it is also linked to the rest of the body through the sympathetic nervous system, and that the general conditions of the body, its organs and systems and their performance are reflected in the changing patterns of the iris. There is a lucrative veterinary branch, known mainly as equine iridology.

Iridologists do not claim to be able to diagnose specific diseases; their methods are supposed to highlight those systems and organs in the body that are healthy, and those which are for example overactive or inflamed. These may point to a tendency in the patient towards certain illnesses, reflect past medical problems, or predict health problems which may be developing.

The ability of iridologists to actually do what they claim, and the alleged diagnostic relationship between the iris and the rest of the human body are widely disputed. The majority of medical doctors reject all the claims of all branches of iridology en bloc and label them as pseudoscience. Iridologists are rarely medical doctors; many training centers exist, but iridology is neither taught in mainstream medical schools, nor acknowledged by official medical organizations as a valid medical technique. Greece, Italy, the Czech Republic and Romania are a few amongst the European countries where medical doctors are encouraged to practice iridology. Iridologists in Latvia, Russia and Ukraine were amongst the first MDs who pioneered scientific iridology studies.

Since iridology was not firstly a method of treatment, its practitioners often also studied other alternative medicines such as naturopathy and used the study of the iris as a diagnostic first step.

Iridology is practiced more widely in Europe (especially in the UK and Germany), where there are approximately 20,000 practitioners, than in the United States, which has only a tenth of that number. Prof Dr Mircea Olteanu, Drs Dan Waniek, MD, Dan Jipa, MD, Ştefan Stângaciu, MD, and the Computer Vision Research Group aka the the Braşov School of iris image analysis and iridial studies worked over 20 years in the mountain region of Transylvania (Central Romania), to develop a specific form of therapy named trans-iridial light therapy (TILT). The method is too discrete, delicate and recent to enjoy wide popularity, critics said. Proponents of this experimental, peer-reviewed and scientific therapy, specifically maintain that their method qualifies iridology as a self-contained, stand alone medical system, one of the few, and possibly the unique part of alternative medicine which is also endorsed by ophthalmologists and conventional medicine at large.

Methods

(larger version)

This is an example of an iridology chart, correlating areas of the left iris, as seen in the mirror, with portions of the left hand wide of the body. Changes in color or appearance of the iris are said to indicate changes in the health of the corresponding section of the body.

(larger version)

This is the corresponding chart for the the right iris which relates to the right hand side of the body.

Iridologists generally use equipment such as a flashlight (UK: torch) and magnifying glass, cameras or even slit-lamp microscopes to examine a patient's irides for tissue changes, as well as features such as specific pigment patterns and irregular stromal architecture. The markings and patterns are often compared to an iris chart that correlates specific zones of the iris with specific parts of the body. Typical charts divide the iris into approximately 80-90 zones. For example, the zone corresponding to the kidney is in the lower part of the iris just before 6 o'clock. Having said that, there are a number of different maps that are used by iridologists.

Iris stromal detail in the iris is supposed to reflect changes in the tissues of the corresponding body organs. For example, acute inflamatory, chronical inflamatory and catharral signs indicate involvement, maintenance, or healing of corresponding distant tissues, respectively. Other features that iridologists look for are contraction rings and Klumpenzellen, which are said to indicate various other health conditions, as interpreted in context.

History

Examining a person's eyes to help determine their health, a mandatory physical examination procedure for any doctor, is an ancient practice dating back at least as far as the ancient Greeks. Plato in Charmides deals with the medicine of Abaris the Hyperborean and explicitely points to the eye-body connection - although he does not make the specific correlations found in modern iridology.

The first explicit description of iridological principles such as homolaterality (without using the word iridology) are found in Chiromatica Medica, a famous work published in 1665 and reprinted in 1670 and 1691 by Philippus Meyeus (Philip Meyen von Coburg).

The first use of the word Augendiagnostik (loosely translated as iridology began with Ignatz von Péczely, a 19th-century Hungarian physician. The most common story is that he got the idea for this diagnostic tool after seeing similar streaks in the eyes of a man he was treating for a broken leg and the eyes of an owl whose leg von Péczely had broken many years before. At the First International Iridological Congress of Iridology, Ignaz von Péczely's nephew, Dr August von Péczely, dismissed this myth as an apocryphal, and maintained that such claims were irreproducible.

German contribution in the Naturheilkunde field is due to a minister Pastor Felke, who developed a form of homeopathy for treating specific illnesses and described new iris signs in the early 1900s. However, Pastor Felke was subject to a long and bitter litigation. The Pastor Felke Institute in Heimshiem, Germany was established as a leading center of iridologic research and training.

Iridology became popular in the United States in the 1950s, when Bernard Jensen, an American chiropractor, began giving classes in his own method. This is in direct relationship with P. Johannes Thiel, Eduard Lahn (becoming an American under the name of Edward Lane) and J Haskell Kritzer. Jensen insisted on the body's exposure to toxins, and the use of natural foods as detoxifiers.

Alleged benefits

Practitioners of iridology point to the following benefits of iridology:

1. Their examination is not invasive. The only thing patients have to be able to tolerate is light being shone in their eyes.

2. Iridologists aim to keep you well. They try to discover imbalances or weaknesses in your body before they develop into serious medical problems. Of course prevention of health problems is a central concept of all schools of medicine. Iridologists' advice on how to keep yourself well is frequently good. For example, they may recommend a good diet, drinking plenty of water, and moderate exercise.

3. A visit to an iridologist, especially a paid for visit, has a powerful placebo effect. If a patient thinks that by following the iridologists advice they 'will' feel better then they probably will. Similarly, conventional drugs also have a placebo effect, and some studies indicate that around 1/3 of all visits to doctors have at least some psychosomatic component.

Criticism

Mainstream medicine is dismissive of iridology largely because published studies have indicated a lack of success for some of the iridological claims:

• In a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (1979, vol. 242 (13): 1385-1389), three well qualified iridologists incorrectly identified kidney disease in photographs of irides and often disagreed with each other. The study was conducted by researchers at the University of California. They used an iridologist's camera to take photographs of 48 patients with moderate or severe kidney desease and a control group of 95 people who did not have kidney disease. The iridologists fared no better in their ability to predict kidney disease than if they has simply tossed a coin. They did not agree with one another, and had no better luck in predicting the severe disease as opposed to the moderate. The researchers concluded "iridology was neither selective nor specific, and the likelihood of correct detection was statistically no better than chance". Iridologists defended themselves by stating that they needed live examinations and that their approach was valid for predictions of health, not of disease tags once the disease was developed and even complicated.

• Another study criticizing an alleged inappropriate search for gall bladder disease in the patient's iris was published in the British Medical Journal (1988, vol. 297 (6663): 1578-1581). Paul Knipschild MD, of the University of Limburg in Maastricht, selected 39 patients who were due to have their gall bladder removed to following day, because of suspected gallstones. He also selected a group of people who did not have diseased gall bladders to act as a control. A group of 5 iridologists examined a series of slides of both groups irises. The iridologists were not able to identify correctly which patients has gall bladder problems and which had healthy gall bladders. For example one of iridologists diagnosed 49% of the patients with gall stones as having them and 51% as not having them. He diagnosed 51% of the control group as having gall bladder problems and 49% as not. Dr Knipschild concluded "this study showed that iridology is not a useful diagnostic tool ". Iridologists defended themselves with the same considerations as above, but also attacked the methodology of the study and rejected it in at least three published articles.

• A 1985 review by L. Berggren in Acta Ophthalmologica (63(1):1-8) concluded "Good care of patients is inconsistent with deceptive methods, and iridology should be regarded as a medical fraud." However, L. Berggren added no new independent data and only made a statement of his informed opinion based on reviews of prior studies.

In 1999 in the UK the The Academy of Medical Sciences said of iridology, and some other alternative medical practises: "these are valueless diagnostic techniques that are potentially dangerous if applied to patients who require proven diagnostic techniques." However, the UK is among the few countries where iridologists are both accepted and endorsed as certified health practitioners, who pledge not to use their knowledge in an exclusive way, but to rely on the clinical context. Moreover, no diagnostic technique outside the golden standard has an absolutely proven value but only a measurable false positive rate, false negative rate and oeverall accuracy ratios.

The advice given by iridologists is both specific and non-specific. Specific advice is centered on the weakness as found and could be integrated into targeted prevention strategies. For instance any screening method in populations always identifies a number of people in apparent full health who nevertheless show some hidden predisposition, diathesis or other specific disease-prone conditions. This is more than genetic screening inasmuch genes show potential while epigenetic studies, including iridologic, show actual problems once genes got the chance to express their code into actual living structures or physiological states. The non-specific advice, although good, is the same as that given by conventional doctors.

Mainstream Medical Examination of the Eye

Although mainstream medicine considers iridology as quackery, there are many times when a conventional doctor will examine the eyes of a patient. The most obvious example would be diseases of the eye. Medical doctors performing iris examinations in order to determine eye problems, may use biomicroscopes and gonioscopes. Examination of eyes is a mandatory part of any clinical examination, attempting to answer clinical questions raised by jaundice, excess cholesterol, general neurologic conditions and more specific syndromes, including Foster-Kennedy, Claude-Bernard-Horner, Adie's etc.

Selective bibliography

• Western Medicine looks at Iridology... Again by Bill Caradonna R.Ph. Several more rebuttals of official critics of iridology are found at the same resource online.
• Popescu, M. P., Jipa, D. A., and D. A. Waniek (1987). Iridologia în oftalmologie. Tratat de Oftalmologie. M. Olteanu. Bucureşti, Editura Medicala 1: 78-89.
• Dan Waniek: A model for a possible non-visual function of the iris, lens and peripheral retina. Med Hypoth, 1987, vol 23, Issue 1, pp 309-312. (© 1987 Churchill Livingstone, the Longman Group © 2002 Dr Dan Waniek, MD and the Iris-Ward.com, Inc. for the ISSN 1297-9953).

See also

Ophthalmology

External links

Pro:

• Celestial Healing site about iridology The source of the iris charts used in this article.
• Canadian Journal of the Science and Practice of Iridology A good resource, no longer available as hard print.

Con:

• The Skeptics Dictionary Dr Barrett's view on iridology.
• Iridology Small pdf file duplicating Knipschild and Simon data, with no independent additions, but with valuable illustrations.

Referenced By