Diagnosing Vincent van Gogh, an expedition from the sources to the present “mer à boire”

Abstract

The paintings and writings of Vincent van Gogh are widely admired for their great artistic value. This makes it interesting for doctors and patient groups to mold van Gogh's disease into a figurehead of their own specialty or illness. The recent article of ter Borg and Kasteleijn (2012) [1] in this Journal had a welcome approach by placing the diagnoses given in his lifetime in a historical and cultural context. In this article, the author will explore the diagnosis of epilepsy, adding more details without jumping quickly to conclusions. Apart from the information of eyewitnesses, special efforts are made to look critically at the medical sources as well as to investigate the original family chronicles. There is no easy access to that information. The Dutch vocabulary in the family notes made it tempting, for earlier scholars in this field, to easily link all kinds of attacks in family members to the original diagnosis of epilepsy. A part of the archives of the Willem Arntszhuis Utrecht describing the last days of Vincent's brother Theo, so far published only in Dutch (Voskuil, 2009 [16]), is included here. To integrate all this information, interdisciplinary research in a nonmutually excluding, but complementary, synthesis of today's knowledge is the most fruitful way to understand Vincent's behavior and its disturbances while continuing to admire his beautiful art.