Phineas Gage

September 13, 1848 - It was on this day that a railroad worker named Phineas Gage suffered a gruesome injury that would become a landmark case in the understanding of the human brain.

The crew Gage was working on was clearing the way for new tracks by blasting away some large rocks. Gage's job was to prep the explosive charges by tamping them down with a 3-and-a-half-foot iron rod. Something went wrong and Gage accidentally triggered an explosion. The iron rod came shooting out of the hole and flew right through Gage's head before landing 80 feet away.

Gage's head had been skewered by the thick iron rod.  He had an entry hole just below his left cheekbone and an exit hole on the top of his skull.  Lots of blood and chunks of his brain were pouring out of his head.

Amazingly, Gage was still able to walk to a wagon that would carry him home. He was talking and seemed to be very coherent. He struggled through a few weeks of high fevers and the terrible pain of his swollen and mangled brain...but by mid-October he was back on his feet again.

The left side of his face was frozen with paralysis and his left eye was permanently blind, but the most striking change in Gage was a big shift in his personality. Before the accident he was one of the nicest guys on the crew. But according to some of the people who knew him, the accident had turned him into a real jerk.

History remembers the Phineas Gage case as a revelation that maybe some parts of the brain control certain aspects of the personality. More recently, skeptics claim that the stories of Gage's raging temper were exaggerated.

The truth is that Gage found his way back to a relatively normal life. He worked as a stagecoach driver in Chile for many years, then returned to America as his health began to fail.

Gage died in May of 1860 after suffering violent convulsions. Eventually his skull and the rod that had flown through it were reunited. Both items are still on display in Harvard Medical School's Warren Anatomical Museum.