In 1990, a group of medical researchers theorised that Vincent van Gogh suffered from Ménière’s disease, rather than epilepsy. Ménière’s disease is an inner-ear disorder, causing vertigo and a fullness of the ear that leads to constant noise – something equivalent to listening to a seashell. Hearing loss occurs and worsens over time. Many sufferers will experience a ‘full-blown attack’, sometimes a series of them, in which they perceive the world as violently spinning for hours on end, the noise in their ear reaching an extreme level. Though I have found no validity in the theory after much research on Van Gogh (nor can I find anyone else who supports this theory), I can, and do, imagine what it might have meant.