If a painting’s worth were measured by the money it fetched, van Gogh’s famous rendering of his friend and physician Dr. Gachet would be among the most valuable in all of art. “Portrait of Dr. Gachet”—which depicts a languid man holding a purple foxglove, the plant from which the drug digitalis is derived—was sold in 1990 for an astounding 82 million dollars. The great and famously tortured artist had his own reasons for valuing the portrait. He suffered from severe epilepsy and depended heavily on Gachet’s prescription of digitalis to treat his debilitating seizures.
The ranks of epilepsy medications have expanded considerably in the past hundred years, due mostly to the addition of pharmaceutically derived compounds.
