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Other Hypotheses

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Vincent van Gogh: Chemicals, Crises and Creativity

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Abstract

A typical newspaper article on Vincent starts by telling the audience that there are one hundred and one diagnoses on van Gogh’s illness. This is followed, explicitly or implicitly, by the question, “when will they get it right?” Actually, there are no more than a dozen serious proposals, but many renditions. I started with the assumption that all the authors were sincere but found that only a few advanced the field. Unfortunately, the majority of hypotheses were loosely conceived and poorly documented, but they landed in the literature and to this day are still quoted without much evaluation.

Diseases exist to remind us that we are not made of wood, and it seems to me this is the bright side of it all. Vincent to Monsieur and Madame Ginoux, letter 622a, from St. Rémy, January, 1890.

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  1. Wilfred Niels Arnold
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© 1992 Birkhäuser Boston

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Arnold, W.N. (1992). Other Hypotheses. In: Vincent van Gogh: Chemicals, Crises and Creativity. Birkhäuser Boston. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-2976-6_6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-2976-6_6

  • Publisher Name: Birkhäuser Boston

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4612-7742-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4612-2976-6

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