Phineas Gage
From Psy3241
•Phineas Gage was born July 9, 1823, in Lebanon, Grafton County, New Hampshire.
•He died in San Francisco, California on May 21, 1860.
•On September 13, 1848 Gage, being part of a team of railroad workers in charge of digging blast holes to build a railroad, filled the hole with gunpowder but left out the sand. While tamping it down "the powder exploded, carrying an instrument through his head an inch and a fourth in circumference [sic], 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 the top of his head."
•Gage spoke within a few minutes, walked with little or no assistance, and sat upright in a cart for the 3/4-mile ride to town. Though physicians found him weak from hemorrhage, he had a regular pulse of about 60 and was alert and coherent.
•Amazingly, the rod seemed to have just missed any vital sensory areas in his head, such as the sinus and the left optic nerve.
•It is still uncertain as to whether the rod damaged both frontal lobes or just the left.
•Pre-accident Gage has been described as hard-working, responsible, and popular with the men in his charge.
•Post-accident Gage, however, has been described as fitful, irreverent, indulging at times in the grossest profanity (which was not previously his custom), manifesting but little deference for his fellows, impatient of restraint or advice when it conflicts with his desires, at times pertinaciously obstinate, yet capricious and vacillating, devising many plans of future operations, which are no sooner arranged than they are abandoned in turn for others appearing more feasible.
