The tortured 19th-century Dutch painter Vincent Van Gogh apparently did not suffer from epilepsy or madness but from a disabling inner ear disorder, researchers said.
Dr. I. Kaufman Arenberg said an analysis of 796 letters Van Gogh wrote to family and friends between 1884 and his death by suicide on July 29, 1890, at age 37 "reveals a man constantly in control of his reason and suffering from severe, repeated attacks of vertigo" rather than epilepsy.Although Van Gogh was diagnosed with epilepsy by a physician at the asylum for epileptics and lunatics at Saint-Remy, France, where the painter committed himself in 1889, the "descriptions in his letters are those of a person suffering from Meniere's disease," said Arenberg, of the Swedish Medical Center in Englewood, Colo.
Meniere's disease is a disorder of the inner ear, characterized by recurrent attacks of vertigo, hearing loss and tinnitus - a ringing, buzzing or roaring in the ear. People with vertigo frequently have the sensation that objects are revolving around them, or that they are revolving through space.
On Dec. 23, 1888, while he was living in the town of Arles, Van Gogh cut off part of his left ear and sent it to a prostitute. A doctor called in to examine him wrote that the painter had returned from a brothel and, "assailed by auditory hallucinations, mutilated himself by cutting off his ear."
The researchers said this bizarre behavior suggests Van Gogh's "tinnitus had become intolerable" and that he tried to alleviate the hallucinations by eliminating their source.