In a casting decision sure to make ripples all over Hollywood, representatives for Prince Harry have confirmed that he will play Vincent van Gogh in an upcoming biopic about the infamous painter. It seems clear now that the ex-royal is not only determined to follow his wife, Meghan Markle, away from life in the British monarchy but into her former profession of acting. “Prince Harry is thrilled about this opportunity to further raise awareness about mental health issues,” said his talent agent, Guy Guyerson. “He identifies with Vincent van Gogh in so many ways.” Following the announcement, Prince Harry made a surprise drop-in on the Oprah Winfrey Show to further elucidate his connection to the famed — a famously troubled — Dutch painter. “For one thing, we are both redheads,” he said, “which is a burden that should not be underestimated.” Prince Harry also went on to state that he is similarly “tortured,” and also that his paintings “don’t really look like the things they are supposed to be.” He raised concerns about still having both his ears, but he feels that with sufficient acting prowess, he can overcome that hurdle. “Or … they won’t cut it off, will they?” he asked Oprah. “They won’t cut it off, right?” The Prince added that he had visited Immersive Van Gogh exhibitions in 25 different cities to prepare for the role. He also plans to go look at some of the actual paintings, at some point, though currently he feels that the immersive exhibitions “better serve his process.” From a childhood in the royal spotlight to bestselling author, and now actor, is there anything this audacious redhead won’t try? “I can’t say more right now,” Prince Harry said, smiling mysteriously, “But I am thinking EGOT.”

Authors Show Slated to Rebroadcast Dr. Arenberg’s Interview with Don McCauley Friday, March 25, 2019 The Author’s Show, a professional interview podcast platform to assist authors in promoting their newest works. Check with your local radio service provider to see if they host the Author’s Show or click the link to listen.

The book, Killing Vincent; The Man, The Myth, and The Murder was just published in October 2018. Most everyone believes van Gogh committed suicide. Using 21st century forensics, I make the case the that it was not possible for Vincent to have self-inflicted his mortal wound! He was murdered in a premeditated honor killing. This romantic twist and evidence on a 128-year-old unsolved homicide confounds the false narrative that surrounds the mysterious death of one of the world’s most iconic artists.

These stories can be viewed in their entirty under the Video Archive Section “It’s very crippling to an individual because you don’t have very good balance, you’re very nauseated, you’re very dizzy.” – “They would have to bring me home from work because they thought I had a problem with alcohol or some other situation.” – Larry Veber, Meniere’s Patient, Interview “I was in a grocery store going down the can food aisle and all the sudden the cans started moving and the room started moving and I said to myself, ‘Not here'” – Phyllis Warburton (News inside Aurora, Ear Trouble Piece “Most of the times when my attacks came I just immediately hit the floor, crawl to the bathroom and spend the next 2-3 hours in there.” – Paul McNamee (Channel 4) “That (inner ear valve )surgery…changed my life. I no longer had vertigo attacks, the tinnitus subsided, and I could go out in public with total confidence I wouldn’t fall. To this day I have not had one vertigo attack in the operated ear.” Randy Foshee e-mail, July 1, 2008 Vincent was sadly no different than any of my many patients with inner-ear disease. He had a very characteristic clinical history consistent with Meniere’s disease, not epilepsy. Therefore, Meniere’s disease is the correct, clinically accurate diagnosis and explanation of his violent attacks of vertige and any hallucination of (rotary) motion with strange earl and head noises. Did his attacks of vertigo and the other symptoms of his inner-ear disease have any impact on his death? First, one might wonder when and where Vincent van Gogh experienced his first attack of violent vertigo. Was it Paris, Arles, Saint-Rémy? According to Marc Edo Tralbaut, a leading twentieth-century biographer of van Gogh (1969), these attacks really started in Arles. Did he have an attack on December 23, 1888, that may have precipitated the unusual confrontation with Paul Gauguin? There are many theories regarding what drove van Gogh to mutilate his own ear, including the possibility that it was not self-mutilation at all, but the result of a physical altercation with Gauguin. Still, it is possible that a violent and unexpected attack from this inner-ear condition could have caused this frightened and frustrated man to seek a desperate solution with extreme action. Did Vincent hallucinate rotational vertigo and hear noises inside his ears and head that night? Maybe in the heat of the moment, during an early episode, it seemed like cutting off his left ear would make the symptoms of vertigo and/or the ringing noises in his head go away. We do not know, but that had been speculated as a possibility. Vincent was aware of some of the recently discovered information about inner ear function by Marie-Jean-Pierre Flourens. Is it possible that cutting off his ear had nothing to do with Gauguin’s abrupt departure from the Yellow House in Arles, and nothing ties the two incidents together except bad timing and coincidence? Is it possible that Gauguin cut off van Gogh’s ear and declared him mad? This theory has been broached before. The accepted legend about this event comes down to us from Gauguin’s later memoirs in his Intimate Journals. Would it not have been easier to blame Vincent for the ear episode, since Gauguin always maintained he was mad? Why blame himself or say what really happened? When Gauguin finally put down his story in his journals, both Vincent and Theo had already both died, and he was far away from Paris, as Vincent’s fame was growing. There are no corroborating accounts from Vincent himself. As such, this story has become mainstream history, even though it relies only on Gauguin’s possibly unreliable and biased recollections. As Vincent’s fame began to catch on, Gauguin made some self-aggrandizing gestures that he took credit for pointing Vincent on the correct path when they roomed together in Arles. His path, he shared, brought Vincent’s art to such an acceptable and recognized level—but this is yet another story without substance, elaborated on only years after Vincent died. Perhaps it’s just another story fabricated for the teller’s own benefit. Van Gogh’s output, once he was allowed to paint again, was as prolific in St. Remy as it was in Arles. The only thing that would stop him from painting was an attack of his violent vertigo, nausea, and vomiting. He painted in the high winds and blowing dirt of the infamous mistrals, he painted outside in the blistering sun and heat of Provence, and he painted in the rain. He even painted in the evening with candles lit around the brim of his hat. Tralbaut (1969) says that Vincent had four more major attacks of “madness” in Saint-Rémy. I believe his attacks of “madness” and his attacks of vertige are one and the same, at least when Vincent names them vertige. He had a series of these episodic attacks in 1889, covering the period from July 8 to mid-August. The rest of 1889 was not a good year for Vincent either, in terms of his attacks of his inner-ear vertigo. Holidays, particularly Christmastime, had frequently been a problem period for Vincent over the years. Familial stress may have exacerbated his symptoms, and he had a miserable time from December 24 through the start of the new year. Again, Vincent had both major and minor attacks lasting the entire week of January 23 to 30, 1890. He then had a calm and productive period. Then, he again had a series of major and minor spells from mid-February to mid-April 1890. Vincent expressed a major life- and art-changing fear, writing in a letter that “a more violent attack [of vertige] may forever destroy my power to paint” (#605, Sept. 10, 1889). However, instead of allowing his affliction to slow him down, the overhanging, persistent fear and dread compelled him to paint even more obsessively. Yet, despite this terrible fear of another attack occurring unexpectedly, Vincent, who had just had a notable series of less severe attacks lasting two months, was able and anxious to leave the asylum in spring 1890. He desperately wanted to go to Paris to see his brother, his new sister-in-law, Johanna, and their new son, his namesake. Now there was another Vincent Wilhelm, the third van Gogh in thirty-eight years blessed with that name and big shoes to fill. After a year of lessened anxiety in which he painted as much as possible, he arrived in Auvers-sur-Oise on May 20,1890. Some have suggested that he manipulated Theo into letting him stay in the asylum and paint unimpeded. Maybe he did put undue pressure on his younger brother, pushing him to the brink?

A common misunderstanding about Vincent van Gogh revolves around his well-known “attacks” and hallucinations. Because of these intermittent but acute violent medical problems that resolved spontaneously, he was famously diagnosed with epilepsy at the time he entered the Asylum for Epileptics and Lunatics at Saint-Rémy in 1889. To better understand the impact of his debilitating attacks and hallucinations on his life and his art, and the impact of applying a modern inner-ear disease diagnosis, I have reviewed these medical issues in greater detail. This is an in-depth review of Vincent’s self-described and named symptoms of his “attacks,” namely his use of the word vertige, which could only translate to “vertigo.” Vertigo is the critical clinical diagnostic element required to make the unique diagnosis of Meniere’s disease. Meniere’s disease—which I have long suggested, since 1990, that Vincent suffered from—is a somewhat common condition of the inner ear primarily manifested in acute, violent attacks of vertigo and hallucinations of rotary motion, which often resolve on their own until the next attack occurs unexpectedly. It is noteworthy to accept that the well-known and frequently heard-about attacks that plagued Vincent were from his inner ear and Meniere’s disease, and were not any form of epilepsy. The same applies to the often noted, and directly connected, hallucinations associated with these attacks. If we understand this updated diagnosis, a newfound understanding of van Gogh’s health, mental state, and inner motivations may now be possible. Did this characteristically episodic disease play any role in his death as well? Did an unrequited fear of another, more violent attack of vertigo that would leave him incapable of painting drive him to suicide? More likely, this intense fear that he expressed was a major factor in his compulsive, obsessive need to paint a canvas a day. Vincent van Gogh was known in the art world and among his many biographers to have suffered from violent attacks of some malady about which there has been no agreement.These were attacks of vertigo as he wrote, not “crises” or seizures. After he recovered from the ear self-mutilation in Arles, Vincent admitted himself to the Asylum for Lunatics and Epileptics in Saint-Rémy, about twenty miles from Arles. Dr. Peyron, the admitting doctor, concluded in his intake history that Vincent’s episodic attacks were epilepsy. A plethora of other diagnoses have flooded both the art history and medical literature over the ensuing years. Still no consensus has emerged. This diagnosis of epilepsy stuck with Vincent until 1990, when I published a “Special Communication” in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) and concluded that these violent attacks were attacks of inner-ear vertigo. Vertigo is a key element that distinguishes between a diagnosis of Meniere’s disease and epilepsy. This was the cover story for the issue of JAMA, which was published one hundred years to the week after Vincent’s death. ( Arenberg, JAMA,1990) It is not the purpose of this book to refocus on the various additional medical diagnoses of Vincent van Gogh; anyone, including Vincent, could have had more than one medical problem, which he did. The purpose of discussing his clinical diagnosis of Meniere’s disease and not epilepsy in the context of Killing Vincent is primarily to look at this inner-ear disease and try to determine what impact it may have had on Vincent’s life and his art, and to determine if it may have led to any propensity for suicide or had any impact on his death. Given how much impact they had on his life, it is important to establish whether these attacks of vertigo drove him to suicide, or in some way contributed to the circumstances of his untimely demise. So what is this vertigo, and why is it so important to distinguish between it and dizziness? Vertigo is best defined as a subjective manifestation of an inner-ear disorder in which the patient experiences violent, unexpected attacks of a hallucination of motion, most often rotary, in which the room is spinning or the patient is spinning inside himself. With a Meniere’s disease attack of inner-ear vertigo, an observer may only see eye movements, known as nystagmus, but cannot see any body movement. A vertigo attack is characterized by an unexpected violent onset of a spinning sensation with hallucinations of rotary motion, often associated with nausea and vomiting, followed by intermittent periods of calm. A neurologist who has special interest and expertise with patients who have epilepsy is called an epileptologist. One of my co-authors in the 1990 JAMA article (Bernstein, 1990 ) has confirmed that Vincent’s self-described violent attacks of le vertige were not epilepsy but vertigo of inner-ear origin, and not any other disorder from Vincent’s brain. Vincent described his attacks as vertige in his letters: Parent alternative meaning in English for the French word vertige than vertigo. Here you have Vincent van Gogh stating in his own hand that vertigo was the critical aspect of his recurrent attacks. (Van Gogh,#605) Vincent was very articulate and well-read, with the ability to speak and read several languages, and I must assume that he knew what vertige meant and how to use the word correctly to describe what he felt. Vincent tells us in his letter about his recurrent vertigo attacks and uses the French word vertige to describe his symptom. The translators of the two comprehensive works of his letters translated vertige as “dizziness,” which is clinically incorrect. Vertigo is a much stronger symptom complex than the generic term “dizziness” would imply. While “dizziness” may seem similar and correct to most people, it is an oversimplification that does not reflect the true depth of the clinical meaning of vertigo to a doctor. Therefore, these distinctions seem minor but may actually distract one from assessing the real significance and impact—or lack thereof—of these vertigo episodes on Vincent’s art and his day-to-day life. The most likely cause of these debilitating attacks of vertigo is the condition known as Meniere’s disease. This disease was first described in 1861 by Prosper Meniere ( 1861) and now bears his name. Meniere was an ear doctor far ahead of his time. Prior to his brilliant insight, such attacks of vertigo were considered to be coming from the brain and not the inner ear; consequently, they were lumped together as a type of central nervous system problem, placed in the “junk drawer” of everything that had a violent onset but resolved on its own, and considered a form of epilepsy. If the problem did not get better, it was then considered a stroke or a brain tumor. This huge category of “brain problems” remained until Charcot ( 1881) opened up the modern form of neurology, distinguishing so many different brain problems into more meaningful clinical subcategories. Meniere wrote in 1861 about the inner ear problem that would bear his name. This work preceded much of Charcot’s work, and thus clearly put Meniere far ahead of his time for effectively first distinguishing inner-ear disorders as an important entity distinct from brain disorders. A society, the Prosper Meniere Society, was created, and a gold medal was awarded to distinguished ear specialists to address and reward progress made in the field of this challenging disease. The medal depicts the only known image of Prosper Meniere, which was incorporated into the medal design. Meniere’s disease is characterized clinically by episodes of violent vertigo and hallucinations of rotary motion, fluctuating sensory hearing loss, ringing or noises in the ear or head (tinnitus), and a sense of pressure, pain, or discomfort in the ear or head. True rotary vertigo is the single most critical clinical element in diagnosing Meniere’s disease. As one contemporary patient described: “You really get low on yourself when this disease attacks you. You’re helpless and you feel like your life is going to be virtually over. Vertigo is everything around you are spinning. You have no sense of up or down or left or right. The only thing you want to do is find the floor.” – Paul McNamee (Meniere’s disease educational video) True, rotary, hallucinatory vertigo is so much more clinically significant and meaningful than dizziness, disequilibrium, imbalance, and other lesser forms of an inner-ear or brain balance discomforts and maladies. An attack is not accompanied by any of the body movement you may expect in a seizure disorder. Another patient said: “I became extremely dizzy. Falling over chairs and objects. Tried to regain my composure and it was as if I was drunk. One moment you will be fine. 5-10 minutes later you will be in a full-blown attack. You’ll have difficulty standing up. You’ll be bouncing off of walls. It’s very difficult to describe to the normal person.” Tom Brown, Meniere’s Patient, Interview Channel 2 News Cover Story Segment To those who witnessed one of Vincent’s attacks, he may have exhibited some very unusual verbal and physical behaviors, leading outsiders to assume he was “mad” or intoxicated, or both. He may have appeared as if he had been drinking and feeling like he was inebriated, with nausea and vomiting that can often be hard to distinguish from drunkenness if the drinking episode went unwitnessed. These unexpected, unprovoked hallucinations and other unpleasant symptoms, which interrupted his intense focus on his painting, may also have provoked extreme frustration and outrageous outbursts of anger. But he was not crazy or mad, as he would have appeared during an attack, when observed by another person watching and listening to him during an acute attack. An observer may only see eye movements known as nystagmus. “All of the sudden the room would start spinning violently. You start wondering what is happening to you. You feel a little bit crazy because it comes and goes. It’s not something a person can visually look at you and see something is wrong.” – Jan Hurst, Meniere’s Patient (Interview 9 News, with Sherry Sellers) Meniere’s disease runs along a very diverse spectrum with lots of volatility and can outwardly manifest itself in many different ways to both the viewer and the afflicted one. In a major attack, this hallucination of violent motion is often accompanied by an increase in the patient hearing noises inside his ears or head, called tinnitus. This can be accompanied by a transient loss of hearing in the affected ear. At the same time, an attack can be accompanied by pain or pressure in the ears or head as well as headaches, nausea, vomiting, and profuse sweating. The patient could have difficulty standing, walking, maintaining his balance. They could end up prostrate on the ground, retching as this might be the only safe position of relative stability until the hallucination stops. The patient in the midst of such a dire attack most likely would be nauseated and even vomiting. “When the attacks came the world was spinning. There was no way to keep your balance. If you weren’t holding yourself against the wall trying to get somewhere, you were crawling.” – Paul McNamee (Interview News 7, Mike Fenwick) If suffering a severe enough reaction for a protracted time, the victim can fall, lose consciousness, and—in rare cases—lose bowel and bladder function. In a minor or less severe adjunctive spell of vertigo, after a briefer vertiginous episode, any of the other symptoms described above could occur concurrently but be less severe. Meniere’s disease is not an uncommon disorder; in 1973, the projected incidence and prevalence in the United States was between three and seven million people (Stahle, 1978). This disease is an unfortunate affliction that is not rare and could easily explain Vincent’s attacks as well as his hallucinations. It could further explain the strange noises in his head and the ear pressure he sensed. Additionally, this inner-ear affliction could also explain his volatility and mood swings between his periods of calm and his almost daily, frenetic painting with explosions of color. That never-ending, nightmarish, gnawing fear of another, more violent attack could explain his biggest fear, that he would forever lose his ability to create his art. It could have been what drove him to continue to experiment and paint what he saw better and better. It could also significantly contribute to his exceptional drive to paint a canvas a day, as if each painting were his last.

Though financially unstable and commercially unsuccessful in his life, Vincent was well-known in the impressionist art community. He returned home one day with a mysterious fatal wound. His last words are said to be Dont blame anyone for this. Was he telling the truth, or was he protecting his murderer? Paul Gachet – The Doctor Paul Gachet was known to be Vincents doctor, friend, and confidante. As an art enthusiast himself, Gachet was the go-to physician for many renowned artists and the ideal friend to support the struggling painter. In his letters, however, Vincent reported their relationship as strained, and there were reports of arguments between the two men. Was there a darker side to this friendship that could have resulted in foul play? Marguerite Gachet – The Model Dr. Gachets young daughter, Marguerite, posed for Vincents paintings and drawings on multiple occasions, but it is possible their relationship was deeper than originally thought. Friends reported a blossoming love between the two, and even after Vincents death, she continued to bring flowers to his grave. Is it possible that she knew of the true motives behind the painters death? Paul Gachet Jr. – The Doctors Son Paul Gachet, Jr. was notably never painted or sketched by the prolific Vincent, even though his father and sister were both models multiple times. In interviews years later, he confessed to disliking Vincent, calling him not pleasant and uncooth. It is also likely that he did not approve of the relationship between Vincent and his sister. Would a drive to protect Marguerites honor have been a possible motive to harm Vincent? Rene Secretan – The Bully Rene was a teenager in Auvers, the town in which Vincent lived. Rene and his friends were known to have bullied and humiliated the reclusive painter on more than one occasion, and Rene was said to have had access to a gun. Was it possible that a prank gone wrong or an extreme act of bullying caused Vincents fatal wound? The Ravoux Family – The Inkeepers The Ravoux family ran the inn where Vincent lived and died. It was reported that they owned a gun, which could have been used to inflict the fatal wound. Even if they were not responsible, they would have had access to a great deal of information about their tenants life and saw him in his final days. Is it possible that they knew the true cause of Vincents death? It Was Someone Else On the day in which Vincent was mortally wounded, he had left his home to paint the wheat fields. By all accounts, he did much of his painting alone and was extremely predictable in his work schedule. Was it possible he was followed to his workplace by a violent individual wanting to rob him, or worse?

Dr. Arenberg had a dramatic introduction into what would become his life’s work when he was young, having witnessed the unexpected collapse of his friend’s mother. He found out the cause was a condition known as Meniere’s Disease, an inner ear condition that causes sudden unexpected vertigo. He entered school to become a doctor specializing in ear conditions. He completed his residency in 1974 and eventually became one of the leading experts of the disease, having developed groundbreaking treatments that changed many patients’ lives. Enthusiasm Dr. Arenberg, an art enthusiast, realized that contrary to popular belief, Vincent van Gogh’s well-known health woes did not match up with diagnosis of epilepsy, but actually was more likely caused by Meniere’s disease. As a lover of van Gogh’s art, as well as an expert on the condition he knew the artist to have suffered from, Dr. Arenberg began to research van Gogh’s life and letters in depth. Affliction In 1990, in observance of the occasion of the 100-year anniversary of Vincent van Gogh’s death, Dr. Arenberg published his theory about the artist’s affliction, which became the cover story of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). Research Further intrigued by the other mysteries in van Gogh’s life, Dr. Arenberg continued his research, focusing on the unusual circumstances of the artist’s final days before his unexpected death in 1890. Launch “Killing Vincent” will present these findings in a brand-new book available in e-book and print. It will also feature interactive elements, including social media platforms as well as a website, allowing readers to interact and discuss the various theories about van Gogh’s life and death, allowing them to vote on who may have killed the beloved painter.

“at the end of my life, I hope to pass away, looking back with love and tender regret, and thinking, Oh the pictures I have made” “… a more violent attack (of vertige) may forever destroy my power to paint.” (#605, sept. 10, 1889) “I would love to show by this work what this nobody has in his heart” “I want to paint what I feel” and “feel what I paint” To Theo; “Oh, if I could have worked without this accursed disease–what things I might have done, isolated from others, following what the country said to me. But there, this journey is over and done with.” (#630, May 1890–Auvers, two months before his death) In a letter written in December of 1889 to Emile Bernard, his colleague, friend, and peer, Van Gogh wrote: “I still have many things to say to you, but although I am writing today, now that my head has gotten a bit steadier, I was previously afraid to excite it before being cured.” (#B2l, Dec 1889) “During these attacks … I feel a coward before the pain and suffering … I also feel frightened faced with the suffering of these attacks. It is the work that keeps me well balanced. I cannot live since I have this dizziness (vertigo) so often.” (#605, Sept. 10, 1889). Van Gogh wrote to Wilhelmina that he suspected his illness was incurable. “I must also say that M. Peyron does not give me much hope for the future and I think this right, he makes me realize that everything is doubtful, that one can be sure of nothing beforehand. I myself expect it [the attacks of “le vertige” (added, see figure 1.)] to return … and that things may continue this way for a long time.” (#605, September 10, 1889–St. Remy) Vincent wrote to his sister “The more ugly, old, vicious, ill, poor I get, the more I want to take my revenge by producing a brilliant color, well arranged, resplendent (canvas,)” (W#7, September 1888.

To Theo: “As soon as I got out into the park, I got back all my lucidity for work; I have more ideas in my head than I could ever carry out, but without it clouding my mind. The brush strokes come like clockwork. So relying on that, I dare think that I shall find my balance in the North, once delivered from surroundings and circumstances which I do not understand or wish to understand.” To Theo: “Oh, if I could have worked without this accursed disease—what things I might have done, isolated from others, following what the country said to me. But there, this journey is over and done with.” (#630, May 1890, Auvers, two months before his death) To Emile Bernard, his colleague, friend, and peer: “I still have many things to say to you, but although I am writing today, now that my head has gotten a bit steadier, I was previously afraid to excite it before being cured.” (#B2l, Dec 1889) To Theo: “Life passes like this, time does not return, but I am dead set on my work, for just this very reason, that I know the opportunities of working do not return. Especially in my case, in which a more violent attack may forever destroy my power to paint. During the attacks I feel a coward before the pain and suffering—more of a coward than I ought to be, and it is perhaps this very moral cowardice which, whereas I had no desire to get better before, makes me eat like two now, work hard, limit my relations with the other patients for fear of a relapse—altogether I am now trying to recover like a man who meant to commit suicide and, finding the water too cold, tries to regain the bank… I also feel frightened faced with the suffering of these attacks. It is the work that keeps me well balanced. I cannot live since I have this dizziness (vertigo) so often.” (#605, Sept. 10, 1889). To Wilhelmina, he wrote that he suspected his illness was incurable: “It is true that after this attack M. Peyron gave me some wine and meat, which I accepted willingly the first days, but he didn’t want to make an exception to the rule for long, and he is right to respect the regular rules of the establishment. I must also say that M. Peyron does not give me much hope for the future, and I think this right, he makes me realize that everything is doubtful, that one can be sure of nothing beforehand. I myself rather expect it to return, however my work occupies my mind so thoroughly that I think that with the physique I have, things may continue this way for a long time.” To Wilhelmina: “The more ugly, old, vicious, ill, poor I get, the more I want to take my revenge by producing a brilliant color, well arranged, resplendent [canvas]. Jewelers to get old and ugly before they learn how to arrange precious stones well. And arranging the colors in a picture in order to make them vibrate and to enhance their value by their contrasts is something like arranging jewels properly or designing costumes.” (W#7, September 1888) After that last two-month-long interval of recurrent spells of his vertigo with periods of calm in between, he then had no further attacks of vertigo. More importantly, he never had any further attacks of vertigo after mid-April 1890, nor did he have any more attacks of madness, presumably describing the same clinical phenomenon. He felt good enough to leave the asylum in mid-May, only a month after this last flurry of milder attacks in mid-April. He apparently never had another attack or any episodes of “madness” after arriving in Auvers-sur-Oise. There were some strange behaviors reported by Dr. Paul-Ferdinand Gachet and later his son, Paul Jr. What were these strange and threatening episodes, and why don’t the Gachets’ statements fit with what others saw and reported regarding Vincent’s unusually pleasant and calm demeanor and behavior? This final period of his last seventy days in Auvers was reported by many to be his most calm and productive period, without any further mention or apparent manifestations of this mysterious medical problem that has baffled so many for so long, and still so many today. During his time in Arles, and again in St. Remy, he had violent attacks of vertigo with hallucinations of rotation. The admitting doctor, Dr. Theophile Peyron, wrote in the register of the asylum that these attacks Vincent had were caused by epilepsy. This was a reasonable nineteenth-century diagnosis before Dr. Jean-Martin Charcot revamped our understanding of neurological disorders.(1881 ) This diagnosis of epilepsy by Dr. Peyron has been carried down for many years and still appears in the art history books. While it was historically accurate in 1889, when it was reviewed more recently by modern clinical medicine, the diagnosis of epilepsy was considered clinically inaccurate to explain his unexpected and unprovoked attacks.(arenberg, 1990) His attacks were coming from a disorder of the inner ear and not a disorder of the brain. During the onset and progression of his inner-ear symptoms, with major and minor attacks, van Gogh began to paint a canvas a day, almost like keeping a diary. During this early period, he completed sixty paintings in two months. Between February 1888 and May 1889, he produced roughly two hundred paintings, two hundred drawings and watercolors, and one hundred letters. It would be interesting to speculate further on whether van Gogh would have been as prolific an artist if he had not had Meniere’s disease or if his Meniere’s disease could have been successfully treated. Perhaps Vincent would not have been prompted to embark on such a frenzy of artistic activity if he did not fear his unexpected, recurrent, and violent Meniere’s disease attacks so much. Oddly enough, maybe we have his afflictions to thank—not for his death, but for the remarkable nature of his life and his prolific output.