What Are Iridology and Sclerology? A Guide to Reading the Eye

Iridologists also read the white sodium ring at the outer edge, flecks of pigment and differences of colour within the iris, each by its place on the chart.

Read What Your Eyes Reveal: An Introduction to Iridology →

1. What is iridology?

   Iridology is the study of the patterns, colours and markings of the iris, read against a chart that gives each region of the iris to a part of the body. Iridologists read it as a portrait of a person's inherited constitution and of the relative strength and needs of their organs and tissues.

2. What is sclerology?

   Sclerology is the study of the visible vessels and other markings on the white of the eye, mapped onto a chart of body regions and read as a picture of the present moment in the corresponding areas of the body. Many readers use the two together: the iris for constitution, the sclera for the present.

3. What are the iris constitutions?

   Following Josef Deck and others, many iridologists read three constitutions from the colour of the iris: lymphatic (blue or grey), linked with the lymphatic system, the skin and the breath; hematogenic (brown), linked with the blood, digestion and the liver; and mixed, or biliary (hazel or green, a blue or grey base with brown pigment), linked with digestion, the liver and the gallbladder. Each is divided further by the density and pattern of the fibres, from the fine, tightly packed neurogenic type to the looser, more open connective tissue type.

4. How is an iridology chart organized?

   Each iris is divided two ways. Around the circle, like a clock face, the head and brain sit near twelve o'clock and the lower body toward six, with the right and left irises drawn as mirror maps of the two sides of the body. From the pupil outward, the rings run from the stomach to the intestines, the collarette (the autonomic nerve wreath), the broad zone of the organs, glands and circulation, and the outer edge of the lymphatic system and skin.

5. What happens in an iridology or sclerology reading?

   A reading usually begins with a conversation about a person's history and daily life. The reader then studies each eye with a magnifying lens and a penlight, or photographs it with an iris camera, compares what is seen with the charts, and talks through constitutional strengths and the areas that ask for support. Guidance usually turns to food, daily rhythm, herbs and rest, and many readers describe the reading as a teaching and an encouragement.

6. How did iridology begin?

   The tradition's founding story belongs to Ignaz von Peczely of Hungary. As a boy, the story goes, he accidentally broke the leg of an owl and noticed a dark stripe appear in its iris, which changed as the leg healed. Years later he mapped the zones of the iris to the body and published his findings and the first iris chart in 1881. An earlier work, Philippus Meyens' Chiromatica Medica of 1665, is often cited as the first to describe the iris divided into regions linked to the body.

7. Who shaped the tradition after von Peczely?

   In Sweden, the homeopath and pastor Nils Liljequist developed his own iris charts. In Germany, Pastor Emanuel Felke carried eye reading into the natural healing movement. Henry Lindlahr brought it into American naturopathy in 1919. Josef Deck developed the constitutional types and a detailed topography, Bernard Jensen made iridology widely known in the United States from the 1950s with his chart, and Leonard Mehlmauer developed and named modern sclerology.

8. Does sclerology have older roots?

   Its readers point to older traditions of reading the eye, above all the Five Wheels (wu lun) of Chinese medicine. The Five Wheels link the eyelids to the Spleen, the corners of the eye and their vessels to the Heart, the white of the eye to the Lung, the iris to the Liver and the pupil to the Kidney, and Chinese medicine has long noted the colour of the whites of the eyes.

9. How do iridology and sclerology relate to naturopathy?

   They are arts of reading: they read the person, and the guidance that follows comes from kindred traditions such as food, herbs and daily rhythm. They are most often found within naturopathy and natural health, especially in Germany, where many Heilpraktiker have long used them, and among readers trained in Jensen's methods in the United States.

10. Which books on iridology are the best place to start?

    Bernard Jensen's The Science and Practice of Iridology is the best place to begin, alongside the classic works of Josef Deck and Henry Lindlahr listed in the references at the end of this page.