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Albert L. Freedman, MD
Jericho, NY

Diane P. Freedman, PhD
Saratoga Springs, NY

JAMA. 1991;265(6):723.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

To the Editor.—

The recent article by Arenberg et al¹ makes me dizzy. It includes too many misquotations, misleading and intentionally incomplete quotations, quotations out of context, cavalier editing of van Gogh's letters (eg, "attacks" being juxtaposed to "vertige"), and twisting of symptoms to fit the proposed diagnosis (Meniere's disease). By their criteria and analysis, few of us do not have Meniere's.

To spare readers of the THE JOURNAL from vertiginous stimuli, I briefly note the following: there is no letter "W 44" as cited by Arenberg et al; in letter W 4, van Gogh does not state "vertigo was felt with me always" but rather writes "I always had fits of dizziness in a horrible nightmare [my emphasis] which has left me since, but which came back regularly then."2 In letter 638 to his brother Theo, the authors quote van Gogh as writing that, "An attack of vertigo . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

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