a voluntary patient. Dr. Peyron interviewed him and entered in the register that van Gogh "Suffers from fits which last from fifteen days to a month. During these fits the patient is victim to terrifying terrors and on several occasions has attempted to poison himself....During the intervals between fits he is perfectly quiet and paints ardently." He was possibly having a seizure when he threatened to kill Paul Gauguin. Since his death, investigators have come to feel that his fits were due to epilepsy. Despairing of a cure and fearing !he would no longer be able to paint, van Gogh committed suicide in July 1890. He felt very deeply that art alone made his life worth living. We know a good deal about his inner life as a result of a massive, stirring and deeply moving autobiography in the form of hundreds of letters written to his brother Theo. The letters he sent to his brother include many eloquent descriptions of his choice of hues and the emotional meaning he attached to them. In one of his letters to Theo he wrote the following: I do not intend to spare myself, nor to avoid emotions or difficulties - I don't care much whether I live a longer or shorter time...The world concerns me insofar as I feel a certain indebtedness and duty toward it because I have walked this earth for thirty years, and, out of gratitude, want to leave some souvenir in the shape of drawings and pictures - not made to please a certain taste in art, but to express a sincere human feeling. I feel that he succeeded....
