Despite Its Lack Of Evidence, Iridology Has Survived On The Medical Fringe For Over A Century
There are many medical pseudosciences that persist despite a utter lack of either plausibility or evidence for efficacy. Some practices emerged out of their culture of origin, or out of the prevailing ideas of a pre-scientific age, while others were manufactured out of the imagination of perhaps well-meaning but highly misguided individual practitioners. They were just made up – homeopathy, for example, or subluxation theory.
Iridology belongs to this latter category – a system of diagnosis that was invented entirely by Ignatz Peczely, a Hungarian physician who first published his ideas in 1893. The story goes that Peczely as a boy found an owl with a broken leg. At the time he noticed a prominent black stripe in the iris of one eye of the owl. He nursed the bird back to health and then noticed that the black line was gone, replaced by ragged white lines. From this single observation Peczely developed the notion of iridology.
Peczely’s idea was that the iris maps to the rest of the body in some way, and therefore the flecks of color in the iris reflect the state of health of the various body parts. This basic approach to diagnosis or treatment is called the homonculus approach – the idea that one part of the body maps to the rest of the body, including the organ systems. Reflexology, auricular acupuncture, and even straight chiropractic follow this approach.
This is what might have happened next: Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Science-Based Medicine*
It’s morning, and in the shower he reaches a trembling hand up towards his face and strokes his jugular lymph node chain, searching for any indications that the small lumps palpable within might have gotten larger. He feels the same familiar bumps, rolls them like jelly beans inside a package, and wonders if at least one lymph node is rotting with cancer.
