Vincent Van Gogh's Health - Behavior

Behavior

Still Life with Absinthe, 1887, Van Gogh Museum

Van Gogh indulged to an abnormal degree in various activities which undermined his health, such as constant smoking, drinking alcohol and coffee to excess, and eating very poorly, even fasting at times. The natural consequence of all this was malnutrition. He was never without his pipe and smoked it even on his deathbed, and he admitted on several occasions that he smoked too much. He also frequently drank alcohol to excess; in particular, he often drank absinthe.

There is some evidence that Van Gogh nibbled at his paints, and the eating of paints is possibly connected with his seizure around New Year 1890. In January 1890, after another one of Vincent's seizures, Theo wrote to him saying "if you know that it is dangerous for you to have colours near you, why don't you clear them away for a time, and make drawings?" Theo's alarm is somewhat reduced after hearing from Vincent, and five days later he explained:

"In first letter he gave me to understand that it was dangerous for you to go on painting, as the colours were poison to you, but he went a little too far, which might have been due to his having relied on unverified rumours, as he himself was ill at the time."

Read more about this topic:  Vincent Van Gogh's Health

Famous quotes containing the word behavior:

    “There is a parallel between the twos and the tens. Tens are trying to test their abilities again, sizing up and experimenting to discover how to fit in. They don’t mean everything they do and say. They are just testing. . . . Take a good deal of your daughter’s behavior with a grain of salt. Try to handle the really outrageous as matter-of-factly as you would a mistake in grammar or spelling.”
    —Stella Chess (20th century)

    “To a first approximation, the intentional strategy consists of treating the object whose behavior you want to predict as a rational agent with beliefs and desires and other mental states exhibiting what Brentano and others call intentionality.”
    —Daniel Clement Dennett (b. 1942)

    “Fatalism, whose solving word in all crises of behavior is “All striving is vain,” will never reign supreme, for the impulse to take life strivingly is indestructible in the race. Moral creeds which speak to that impulse will be widely successful in spite of inconsistency, vagueness, and shadowy determination of expectancy. Man needs a rule for his will, and will invent one if one be not given him.”
    —William James (1842–1910)