The Origin of Iridology
A young Ignatz Von Pecezely, the main founder of iridology, first discovered the connection between the iris and the body from an owl he was trying to free. The story goes that while struggling to free this owl it’s leg accidentally broke and at that moment Von Pecezely was staring into the owls eye and noticed a black streak instantaneously appear. Von Pecezely took it upon himself to nurse the owl back to health, and he began to notice the black line turning into a crooked white line over time. Later in life, after becoming a doctor he remembered this incident while treating a patient with a broken leg and to his amazement noticed the exact same crooked white line within the iris. Over the course of his career Dr. Ignatz Von Pecezely created the first iris chart from examining his patients eyes and looking for correlations in iris markings. In 1826 he wrote “Discoveries in the field of natural science and medicine: Instructions in the study of diagnosis from the eye.”
Over the years there has been many other holistic health practitioners write on the iris including names like Dr. Peter Theil (The Diagnosis of Disease by Observation of the Eye), Dr. Bernard Jensen (The Science and Practice of Iridology) and Dorothy Hall (Iridology).