From: smith+@cs.cmu.edu (Sean Smith)
Subject: That'd be through the Skull, Bob!
Summary: a railroad worker loses [some of] his mind
Keywords: Phineas Gage
Organization: School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon
Date: Fri, 14 Aug 1992 13:42:17 GMT


Excerpts from _Mechanics of the Mind_, by Colin Blakemore. (Cambridge
University Press, 1977.  ISBN 0-521-29185-2), pp. 1-4:

	The accident occurred at about half past four in the afternoon of 
	13 September 1848 near the small town of Cavendish, Vermont.  A gang
	of men, under the direction of their energetic and likable foreman,
	25-year-old Phineas P. Gage, was working on the new line of the 
	Rutland and Burlington Railroad.  They were about to blast a rock
	that blocked their way and Phineas himself took charge of the
	delicate business of pouring gunpowder into a deep narrow hole 
	drilled in the stone.  The powder in place, he rammed in a long iron 
	rod to tamp down the charge before covering it with sand.  But the
	tamping iron rubbed against the side of the shaft and a spark ignited
	the powder.  The massive rod, three and a half feet long, an inch
	and a quarter in diameter, weighing thirteen pounds, shot from the
	hole under the force of the explosion.  This terrible missile struck
	Phineas Gage just beneath his left eye and, in a fraction of time,
	tore through his skull, departed from a hole in the top of his head,
	and finally landed some fifty yards away.

	Believe it or not, that was not the end of Phineas P. Gage---at least
	not of the body that bore his name.  He was thrown to the ground,
	and his hands and feet twitched convulsively; but within a few minutes
	he was conscious again, and able to speak.  The other workmen carried
	him gently to an ox-cart nearby and he rode for three quarters of a 
	mile, sitting upright, to a hotel in the town.  With little
	assistance he stepped from the cart, climbed a long flight of stairs
	to a room where his awful injuries were dressed and he awaited the 
	arrival of local physicians.  The two doctors could hardly believe 
	the incredible tale until, like Doubting Thomas, they examined his
	wounds with their own hands.

	At ten o'clock that same evening, though the bleeding was still
	terrible, Phineas was rational enough to say that he did not need to
	see his friends because he should be back to work within a couple of
	days.   There could be no doubt that a large metal rod had passed
	completely through the part of his brain that filled his forehead,
	yet his senses and speech were normal and his memory apparently 
	unimpaired.

	The next few days were difficult.  The wound became infected and 
	Phineas was anaemic and delirious.  But with liberal doses of
	calomel, rhubarb and castor oil he slowly improved and after three
	weeks he called for his trousers and was eager to escape from his
	bed.  By the middle of November he was wandering about the town,
	planning his new future.  And here is the point of this curious
	tale.  Phineas Gage had a NEW future for he was a different man.
	The efficient and capable foreman no longer existed; the friendly,
	considerate Phineas Gage was dead, and in his place rose a child-like
	Phoenix with the strength of an ox and an evil temper to match it.

	Years later, John Harlow, one of the two doctors who had orginally
	attended him, wrote:
	
	``His physical health is good, and I am inclined to say that he has
	recovered...The equilibrium or balance, so to speak, between his 
	intellectual faculties and animal propensities, seems to have been
	destroyed.  He is fitful, irreverent, indulging at times in the
	grosses 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 operatins, which are no sooner arranged than they are 
	abandoned... In this regard his mind was radically changed, so 
	decidedly that his friends and acquaintances said that he was
	`no longer Gage.' ''

	The new Phineas Gage was rejected by his previous employers and he
	drifted around the United States and South America exhibiting 
	himself, and the tamping iron that had twisted his mind, as a 
	fairground attraction.  He died in San Francisco, but his skull
	and iron rod are still on display to the public, in the museum
	of Harvard Medical School.

There are pictures, too.

This book is a treasure-trove of fun facts on weird brain stuff---like
the split-brain experiments.  I'll sift through and post more when I get
the time...


--Sean ``needed that like I need a hole in the head'' Smith

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                         sean.smith@cs.cmu.edu
                     carnegie mellon computer science

          posting from PITTSBURGH, the center of the AFUniverse!
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