Phineas Gage

Phineas P.Gage was born on May 21 and he was a railroad construction worker.

He was suffered by an unusual kind of distressing brain injury which made severe damage to parts of his frontal brain during a work accident.

During 1848 in the month of September the Rutland & Burlington was expanding its rail road across Vermont. The works are given in order to keep track straight as possible and the work is to remove the great amount of stone in the track. The group of men undertaking is the foreman and the one person among them was Phineas P.Gage. He was 25 years old and he was kind, quite, intelligent and well liked.

Gage was an expert in removing rocks using explosives. It was a big procedure where they are supposed to drill the rock and put a fine hole with explosive powders, insert a fuse and then cover the powder with sand. The sand cover is necessary to direct the force of blast into the rock and not on the top of the hole. Gage had a custom-made rod which weighed 13 pounds and measures 3 ½ feet long with diameter of 1 ¼ inches at the bottom, tapering to a dull point at the top.

Sticks and stones May Break My Bones:

In the evening on September 13, Gage was doing the usual preparing a charge for explosion of the rock. He failed to notice that he has not covered the powder with sand before he began to tamper it. When he tampered that without notification, the explosion propelled the rod out of the hole through the Gage's left cheek and came out from the top of his skull.

Surprisingly in spite of having two new hole and large hole in his head, the bleeding resulted and Gage did not even lose consciousness. He remained upright and his co-workers took him to the nearby town of Cavendish and Dr Harlow looked over Gage..

After physical recovery psychiatrist described Gage as follows: "Remembers passing and past events correctly, as well before as since the injury. Intellectual manifestation feeble, being exceptionally unpredictable and childish, but with a will as strong as ever; is particularly fixed; will not yield to self-possession when it conflicts with his desires." Dr Harlow reports that Gage's employers, "who regarded him as the most efficient and talented foreman considered the change in his mind so marked that they could not give him his place again.

He is fitful, irreverent, indulging at times in the grossest oath (which was not previously his custom), manifesting but little respect for his fellows, impatient of restraint or advice when it conflict with his requirements. A child in his logical capacity and manifestations, he has the animal passions of a strong man. His mind was fundamentally changed, so definitely that his friends and associates said he was 'no longer Gage.'