Phineas Gage

Phineas P. Gage (1823–1860) was an American railroad construction foreman whose improbable survival of a catastrophic injury made him a landmark case in the understanding of the brain and personality. On September 13, 1848, while blasting rock south of Cavendish, Vermont, Gage was using a custom-made tamping iron—a pointed, cylindrical rod three feet long, an inch and a quarter in diameter, and weighing over thirteen pounds—to pack an explosive charge. Distracted by his men, he turned his head and opened his mouth to speak; at that instant the iron sparked against rock, igniting the powder.

The rod rocketed upward, entering the left side of his face just forward of the jaw, passing behind his left eye, through the left frontal lobe of his brain, and exiting the top of his skull. Despite this, Gage spoke within minutes, walked with little help, and sat upright. Before the accident, physician John Martyn Harlow described him as a capable, energetic foreman—a shrewd businessman, persistent in executing plans.

Afterward, friends reported changes so profound that they considered him “no longer Gage.” The case became known as the “American Crowbar Case” and influenced 19th-century debates on cerebral localization, suggesting that damage to specific brain regions could produce specific mental changes. However, the established facts about Gage are limited, leading many later accounts to exaggerate or distort his behavioral changes. A report shortly before his death indicates his most serious mental alterations were temporary, and that later in life he became far more functional and socially adapted, possibly aided by the daily structure of his work as a stagecoach driver in Chile.