Newly Discovered Photos Of Man Who Helped Establish Modern Neurology
March 22nd, 2010
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No, he wasn’t a doctor, nor a scientist, but a railroad foreman who inadvertently changed the world while packing explosives on a cut in Vermont. At 25 years old, Phenaeas Gage was working for the Rutland and Burlington Railway in 1848, tamping black powder into drill holes in rock for a new track route. The powder exploded and drove the iron rod clear though his skull, from his right cheek, through his eye socket and out his forehead.
Although he lost an eye, Gage remarkably survived the incident. He also had lost a large portion of his frontal brain lobe. Exactly what this did to Gage has not been well documented. Some accounts have said that it resulted in a man who was unable to control his emotions and could not maintain a job, while others seem to indicate he did fairly well. Whatever the case, a couple of things are clear: the injury did dramatically change Gage’s personality, but did not incapacitate him beyond the ability to take care of himself and live a relatively normal life.
Although direct documentation and scientific data about Gage’s incident and subsequent condition is scarce, it did spark a great deal of interest in the human brain, the mind and how the two related. The fact that Gage survived yet was clearly different was stunning.
His case, which was known at the time as “The American Crowbar Case” would become one of the most cited cases in early neurology and began the speculation of brain region and function. Gage’s case provided direct evidence that different parts of the brain preformed different functions and indicated that the brain could continue to function even with some parts damaged or destroyed.
Gage died only sixteen years later in 1860. Before his death he had begun to experience severe convulsions. It’s not entirely clear if these were related to the injury he had sustained years earlier.
Until recently the only known likeness of Gage was his plaster life mask, which, along with his skull, was kept at the Warren Anatomical Museum at Harvard University Medical School.
This all changed last year, when this previously unknown photograph came to light:
It’s actually quite amazing how this photo came to light. The photograph is a Daguerreotype, one of the oldest types of portrait-quality photographs. It was in the collection of Jack and Beverly Wilgus, who had owned the picture for more than thirty years. They had assumed that the photograph was New England whaler, perhaps injured in a whaling accident, standing with a harpoon or other whaling instrument. It was only after the photograph was scanned and posted on Flick-r. Initially they heard from a whaling historian that this was not the case, before the photograph was recognized by others as possibly being Phineas Gage. A comparison with the life mask of Gage and the tamping iron proved conclusively that, yes, indeed, the photo is of Phineas Gage holding the iron that went through his head.
The publication of this photo lead to yet another extraordinary fine. Earlier this month, it came to the attention of two distant family members of Phineas Gage that the photo had made a huge splash. They also had possession of a photograph of Phineas Gage in a similar pose with the iron. Tara Gage Miller had a copy of the photograph on a cabinet card as did . The family was entirely aware that this was Phineas Gage, but were unaware that he had much notoriety outside the family or that the image was unknown and of such importance. It turns out that there were at least two copies of this photograph in the custody of Gage-descended family members.
It is a rare and amazing event to find such a piece of history which has existed for so many years without anyone knowing of its existence. It is even more amazing to realize that a random post to a photo sharing site could, so unexpectedly, reveal these historic images that nobody ever even knew to look for.
More info on Phineas Gage can be found on this website.
This entry was posted on Monday, March 22nd, 2010 at 12:17 am and is filed under Good Science, Humor, Misc. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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March 22nd, 2010 at 1:28 am
http://engforum.pravda.ru/showthread.php?t=280780
Einstein puts the final nail in the coffin of atheism…
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7vpw4AH8QQ
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atheists deny their own life element…
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March 22nd, 2010 at 1:49 am
deadatheism said:
Funny, actually Einstein was an atheist. Of this there is no doubt. He used the word “god” on several occasions in a metaphoric sense or to describe the unity of physics and the universe, but he never meant it literally. He explicitly stated this in letters he wrote that he absolutely did not believe in a “God” as religion states nor did he believe in any higher spiritual intelligence. He also said that while he appreciated his heritage as a Jew, he only saw this as being a cultural and ethnic thing and he called the Jewish religion “Superstition.”
Looks like you have not done much reading on this, buddy.
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March 22nd, 2010 at 1:55 am
The paper holds their folded faces to the floor, and every day the paperboy brings more…
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March 22nd, 2010 at 9:59 am
Finrod said:
Took me a second to realize that you were quoting the Pink Floyd song ‘Brain Damage’ and not commenting on deadatheism’s troll. Or where you?
Ether way, very good.
Still it is so true that much of what we know of the brain is the result of of the study of those poor folk who have sustained damage to some isolated part of an otherwise healthy organ. Their loss, is our gain.
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March 22nd, 2010 at 11:01 am
Back to Phineas. A small nitpick: Phineas was tamping blasting powder into the hole, not dynamite, which was invented in 1866 and doesn’t need to be tamped anyway. Speculation is that the iron rod hit a flint pebble in the hole, causing a spark.
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March 22nd, 2010 at 11:55 am
Chas, PE SE said:
You’re right. I saw ‘dynamite’ somewhere about the incident. I should have known better and realized that was not accurate. Thanks. I corrected it.
Really though, it’s quite dangerous either way and not something that should really be done. If you have to get it in, give it one hard push but don’t hit it! Dynamite can sometimes leak a little nitroglycerin and that can cause an explosion in a shock. Dynamite is designed and manufactured not to do that, but if the manufacturing was shoddy or it’s old, it can “sweat” nitroglycerin.
Black powder is very sensitive to any spark and can also be shock sensitive if you hit it too hard. In tight packing it can be ignited very easily. Back when they had to pack it into muskets, the little finger was used to do the final push with the rod, because occasionally it would blow off your finger.
Being rough and ramming and shocking modern explosives like TNT, RDX or C4 is perfectly fine though. You can knock those around as much as you want and they won’t go off. They need a primary explosive, usually in the form of a blasting cap, to get them going.
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March 22nd, 2010 at 12:10 pm
Amazing photos. He looks remarkably good for someone who had received such an injury. Aside from the eye, you just about can’t tell.
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March 22nd, 2010 at 6:36 pm
DV82XL said:
In truth DV82XL, it was actually a comment about lunatics rather than the brain damaged, but you are right, it works well both ways.
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March 25th, 2010 at 2:48 pm
Remembering games and daisy chains and laughs…
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March 31st, 2010 at 2:50 am
A very good read, the Wikipedia article and the one you have listed. It’s amazing how poorly documented this case was. All that we seem to know for sure is that his personality did change (exactly how? Seems to be lost to history) but that however it changed or whatever his disability, it was not so bad that he could not return to being a functional member of society.
Amazing really, that this one incident could spur so many to start looking at the brain and how it worked.
It’s a shame he died so young. I wonder if it had to do with the injury? Sounds like it probably did, in some way.
It’s a very strange way to achieve immortal fame for an otherwise unknown railroad foreman in Vermont.
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March 31st, 2010 at 8:54 am
Eminem has a song on the theme of Brain Damage also…
Brain damage, ever since the day I was born
Drugs is what they used to say I was on
They say I never knew which way I was goin
But everywhere I go they keep playin my song
Seriously though, I didn’t know the story behind the pictures of Gage: that’s really interesting. What’s always surprised me about the case is that he was the first person to come to public attention with frontal lobe damage. I guess in the era before antibiotics most people who suffered penetrating brain injuries would have died of infection. There must have been people going around with frontal lobe tumours, abscesses, etc. but noone would have known.
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March 31st, 2010 at 12:17 pm
Neuroskeptic said:
Yeah, that was something that occured to me, but it might have also helped that the injury and incident were so dramatic. The iron flew clear through his head, taking out an eye on the way and landed a good 80 feet from him. It was a bit surprise that he lived at all. I’m sure that helped catch everyone’s attention. It’s a lot more dramatic than, for example, if someone were shot in the head with a bullet or something.
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