The Illness of Vincent van Gogh: An Interactive Web Site

Fig. 1.

Absinthe—one of the precipitants of medical crises for Vincent van Gogh. Left: Absinthe glass with the neat liqueur and a slotted spoon. Right: Appearance after addition of water over the sugar cube.

Photo © Wilfred Niels Arnold

There has been much idle speculation, and thus a compounding of errors and myths, surrounding the jagged life of Vincent van Gogh. Popular media attention over the last century has been quantitatively impressive but disappointing in quality, especially to those of us who have labored at the border of art and science. Elsewhere [1], I have attempted to outline formally some of the interdisciplinary conflicts that have arisen in the discussion and observed that, while all bridging attempts among the arts and sciences are laudable, the more successful to date have come from science towards art [2].

"The Illness of Vincent van Gogh" interactive web site [3] offers a set of structured scientific analyses to assist the participant in arriving at a keen understanding of the nature of van Gogh's illness. Unit 1 summarizes the raw data and emphasizes instructive features of the time-course of van Gogh's major medical crises. Concepts such as "organized skepticism" and "working hypothesis" are defined and developed. Prompts and questions encourage the individual participant to self-dismiss foolish options and to disdain the appeals to authority that are so popular among too many psychologists and art historians. The second unit explains the biochemistry of heme biosynthesis and describes the hallmarks of a congenital disease entity called "acute intermittent porphyria," which is the only working hypothesis to accommodate all of van Gogh's signs and symptoms (Fig. 1). A more extensive discussion of this diagnosis is given in my book [4].

This program is one of several self-study modules being developed by Robert A. Mitchell of Wayne State University School of Medicine. It was written for a primary audience of medical students and health care professionals, but, because of the widespread interest in Vincent van Gogh, the art and the man, readers of Leonardo may also enjoy visiting this site.