Phineas Gage
What if you left home one day - just a regular ordinary day - and before the day was over you ended up with a rod through your head?
What if you lived to tell your friends about it?
That actually happened to a 25 year old railroad foreman named Phineas Gage in 1848.
This is a picture of him holding the rod that pierced his skull. He ended up the most famous man in neuroscience.
People had been curious about the structure and function of the brain for a very long time, but were unable to study it very well.
With the exception of studying brains of the dead and observing what happened to injured or damaged brains, the structures and functions of the brain were out of reach.
Report cover of the study done on Phineas Gage and his injury.
While working with his men to advance the railroads, a rod used to pack dynamite exploded and went through Phineas' head.
He survived but experienced a total personality change because of the amount of damage to the frontal lobe. His injury and especially the change in him sparked a renewed interest in trying to unravel the mysteries of the brain and its abilities.
Drawings of what Phineas' skull probably looked liked with the rod still through it.
The specific changes observed in his behavior pointed to emerging theories about the localization of brain function, or the idea that certain functions are associated with specific areas of the brain.
Today, scientists have a better understanding of the role that the frontal cortex has in higher order functions such as reasoning, language, and social cognition.
Horrible Accident-- As Phineas P. Gage, a foreman on the railroad in Cavendish, was yesterday engaged in tamkio for a blast, the powder exploded, carrying an iron instrument through his head an inch and a fourth in circumfrence, and three feet and eight inches in length, which he was using at the time. The iron entered on the side of his face, shattering the upper jaw, and passing back of the left eye, and out at the top of the head. The most singular circumstance connected with this melancholy affair is, that he was also alive at two o'clock this afternoon, and in full possession of his reason, and free from pain.--Ludlow, Vt., Union
This is the item that was in the Boston Post on September 13, 1848 reporting Phineas' accident.
In those years, while neurology was in its infancy, Gage's extraordinary story served as one of the first sources of evidence that the frontal lobe was involved in personality.
If you would like to learn more about Phineas Gage's story, read The Smithsonian's article about it.
Phineas Gage: Neuroscience's Most Famous Patient
This is Phineas' actual skull. After he died, it was photographed along with the rod that pierced his head.
 |