[Theo van Gogh's medical record]. / Het medische dossier van Theo van Gogh.

In the final months of his life Theo van Gogh was admitted to the 'Geneeskundig Gesticht voor Krankzinnigen te Utrecht'. In November 1990 from the archives of the Willem Arntsz Huis, psychiatric centre in Utrecht, the medical files from this period were made available and a transcription was made by Han van Crimpen and Sjraar van Heugten, scientific collaborators of the Van Gogh Museum. From these data it is acceptable to conclude that Theo van Gogh had dementia paralytica and suffered a fast deterioration of his situation in these last few months. It is, however, probable that at least as early as 1886 Theo showed the first symptoms of this disease when he was in Paris, and that he was treated for this reason by dr. Rivet and dr. Gruby. There are insufficient indications that in Vincent van Gogh's case the same diagnosis can be put forward. It is most probable that during Vincent's visit to Theo in Paris in July 1890 in Theo's case symptoms of his medical deterioration were to be seen and this may have influenced the considerations finally leading to Vincent van Gogh's suicide.

The epilepsy of Fyodor Mikhailovitch Dostoevsky (1821-1881).

Over 100 years ago, on the 27th of January 1881, Fyodor Mikhailovitch Dostoevsky died. Since that time, many biographies, monographs, memoirs, and, to a lesser extent, articles in the medical literature have discussed the fact that Dostoevsky was a patient with epilepsy. An attempt is made here to integrate the details of his illness into a medical case history, as we now do for every patient who visits a physician for the first time. The information pertinent to the case history includes: a description of all seizures, frequency of seizures, provocative factors, course of the disease, treatment, and family history. Even though we do not have the benefits of the results of electroencephalography (invented by Hans Berger in 1929), classification of the type of epilepsy Dostoevsky had is attempted. The existence or absence of the so-called ecstatic aura is crucial to such classification. Based on the data, it is likely that Dostoevsky suffered from partial complex epilepsy with secondarily generalized nocturnal seizures rather than primary generalized epilepsy.