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Published Online
on July 29, 2005

Stroke. 2005
Published online before print July 29, 2005, doi: 10.1161/01.STR.0000177473.17396.7e
A more recent version of this article appeared on September 1, 2005
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Submitted on April 27, 2004
Revised on August 4, 2004
Accepted on November 17, 2004

Oskar Kokoschka and Auguste Forel. Life Imitating Art or a Stroke of Genius?

Veronika Huf and Desmond O’Neill MD, FRCPI*

From the Stroke Service, Department of Medical Gerontology, Trinity Centre for Health Sciences, Adelaide and Meath Hospital, Dublin, Ireland.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: des.oneill{at}amnch.ie.

Abstract--In the spring of 1910, Oskar Kokoschka painted a portrait of the eminent Swiss psychiatrist, neuroanatomist, temperance champion, and myrmecologist Auguste Forel. The painting is a remarkable psychological portrait but also appears to predict the strokes and right hemiparesis that affected Forel more than a year later. Although it is possible that Kokoschka shared a gift of psychic prediction with his mother and grandmother, a more likely explanation can be ascribed to a combination of the artist’s acute perception and the presence of subclinical signs of stroke disease.


Key words: cerebrovascular accident • history