Phineas Gage

Phineas P. Gage
The first identified (2009) portrait of Gage, here with his "constant companion for the remainder of his life"‍—‌his inscribed tamping iron.
Born	July 9, 1823 (date uncertain) Grafton Co., New Hampshire
Died	May 21, 1860(1860-05-21) (aged 36) In or near San Francisco
Cause of death	Status epilepticus
Resting place	Warren Anatomical Museum, Boston (skull) Cypress Lawn Memorial Park, California (other remains)
Occupations	Railroad construction foreman blaster stagecoach driver
Known for	Personality change after brain injury
Spouse	None
Children	NoneTemplate:Ranchor

Phineas P. Gage (1823 – May 21, 1860) was an American railroad construction foreman remembered for his improbableTemplate:Ranchor survival of a rock-blasting accident in which a large iron rod was driven completely through his head, destroying much of his brain's left frontal lobe, and for that injury's reported effects on his personality and behavior over the remaining twelve years of his life‍—‌effects so profound that (for a time at least) friends saw him as "no longer Gage."

The iron's path, per HarlowTemplate:Ranchor

Long known as "the American Crowbar Case"‍—‌once termed "the case which more than all others is calcu­lat­ed to excite our wonder, impair the value of progno­sis, and even to subvert our physiological doctrines" ‍—‌Phineas Gage influenced nineteenth-century discussion about the mind and brain, particularly debate on cerebral locali­za­tion,Template:RanchorTemplate:Ranchor and was perhaps the first case to suggest that damage to specific parts of the brain might induce specific personality changes.Template:RanchorTemplate:Ranchor

Gage is a fixture in the curricula of neurology, psychology, and related disciplines (see neuroscience),Template:Ranchor and is frequently mentioned in books and academic papers;Template:Ranchor he even has a minor place in popular culture.Template:RanchorTemplate:Ranchor Despite this celebrity the body of established fact about Gage and what he was like (before or after his injury) is small, which has allowed "the fitting of almost any theory [desired] to the small number of facts we have" Template:Ranchor‍—‌Gage having been cited, over the years, in support of various theories of the brain entirely contradictory to one another. Historically, published accounts (including scientific ones) have almost always severely distorted and exaggerated Gage's behavioral changes, frequently contradicting the known facts.

A report of Gage's physical and mental condition shortly before his death implies that his most serious mental changes were temporary, so that in later life he was far more functional, and socially far better adapted, than in the years immediately after his accident. A social recovery hypothesis suggests that his employment as a stagecoach driver in Chile provided daily structure allowing him to relearn lost social and personal skills.

Life

Background

Cavendish, Vermont, 20 years after Gage's accident. (A)‍Region of the accident site; (T)‍Gage's lodgings; (H)‍Harlow's home and surgery​

Gage was the first of five children born to Jesse Eaton Gage and Hannah Trussell (Swetland) Gage, of Grafton County, New Hampshire. Little is known about his upbringing and education except that he was literate.Template:RanchorTemplate:Ranchor

Town doctor John Martyn Harlow described Gage as "a perfectly healthy, strong and active young man, twenty-five years of age, nervo-bilious temperament, five feet six inches [1.68 m] in height, average weight one hundred and fifty pounds [68 kg], possessing an iron will as well as an iron frame; muscular system unusually well developed‍—‌having had scarcely a day's illness from his childhood to the date of [his] injury." Template:Ranchor (In phrenology‍—‌then just ending its vogue‍—‌nervo-bilious denoted an unusual combination of "excitable and active mental powers" with "energy and strength [of] mind and body [making] possible the endurance of great mental and physical labor".Template:Ranchor)

Gage may have first worked with explosives on his family's farms or in nearby mines and quarries.Template:Ranchor He is known to have worked on construction of the Hudson River Railroad near Cortlandt Town, New York,Template:Ranchor and by the time of his accident he was a blasting foreman (possibly an independent contractor) on railway construction projects.Template:Ranchor His employers considered him "the most efficient and capable foreman in their employ ... a shrewd, smart business man, very energetic and persistent in executing all his plans of operation",Template:Ranchor and he had even commissioned a custom-made tamping iron‍—‌a large iron rod‍—‌for use in setting charges.Template:RanchorTemplate:Ranchor

Accident

Line of the Rut­land & Burlington Rail­road passing through "cut" in rock south of Caven­dish. Gage met with his accident while setting explo­sives to create either this cut or a similar one nearby.​

External videos
Video reconstruction of tamping iron passing through Gage's skull (Ratiu et al. 2004)​Template:Ranchor

On September 13, 1848, Gage was directing a work gang blasting rock while preparing the road­bed for the Rutland & Burling­ton Railroad south of the town of Cavendish, Vermont. Setting a blast involved boring a hole deep into an outcropping of rock; adding blasting powder, a fuse, and sand; then compacting this charge into the hole using the tamping iron. Gage was doing this around 4:30 p.m. when (possibly because the sand was omitted)Template:RanchorTemplate:RanchorTemplate:Ranchor the iron sparked against the rock and the powder exploded. Rocketing from the hole, the tamping iron‍—‌three feet seven inches (1.1 m) long and 1+1⁄4 inches (3.2 cm) in diameterTemplate:RanchorTemplate:Ranchor‍—‌"entered on the [left] side of [Gage's] face ... passing back of the left eye, and out at the top of the head." 

Despite nineteenth-century references to Gage as "the American Crowbar Case" Template:Ranchor his tamping iron did not have the bend or claw sometimes associated with the term crowbar; rather, it was a pointed cylinder something like a javelin,Template:Ranchor "round and rendered comparatively smooth by use":Template:Ranchor

The end which entered [Gage's cheek] first is pointed; the taper being [twelve] inches [30 cm] long ... circumstances to which the patient perhaps owes his life. The iron is unlike any other, and was made by a neighbouring blacksmith to please the fancy of its owner.

(l)‍Bigelow's estimate of the iron's path (1850).Template:Ranchor (r)‍Ratiu et al. and Van Horn et al. con­cluded Gage's mouth had been open at the crucial moment, and that his skull "hinged" open as the iron passed through.​Template:RanchorTemplate:Ranchor

Weighing 13+1⁄4 pounds (6.0 kg), the tamping iron was found some 80 feet (25 m) away, "smeared with blood and brain." Template:Ranchor

Gage "was thrown upon his back by the explosion, and gave a few convulsive motions of the extremities, but spoke in a few minutes," walked with little assistance, and sat upright in an oxcart for the 3⁄4-mile (1.2 km) ride to his lodgings in town.Template:Ranchor About thirty minutes after the accident Dr. Edward H. Williams, finding Gage sitting in a chair outside the hotel, was greeted with "one of the great understatements of medical history":Template:Ranchor

When I drove up he said, "Doctor, here is business enough for you." I first noticed the wound upon the head before I alighted from my carriage, the pulsations of the brain being very distinct. The top of the head appeared somewhat like an inverted funnel, as if some wedge-shaped body had passed from below upward. Mr. Gage, during the time I was examining this wound, was relating the manner in which he was injured to the bystanders. I did not believe Mr. Gage's statement at that time, but thought he was deceived. Mr. Gage persisted in saying that the bar went through his head. Mr. G. got up and vomited; the effort of vomiting pressed out about half a teacupful of the brain, which fell upon the floor.

Harlow took charge of the case around 6 p.m.:

You will excuse me for remarking here, that the picture presented was, to one unaccustomed to military surgery, truly terrific; but the patient bore his sufferings with the most heroic firmness. He recognized me at once, and said he hoped he was not much hurt. He seemed to be perfectly conscious, but was getting exhausted from the hemorrhage. His person, and the bed on which he was laid, were literally one gore of blood.

A night­cap (from an 1801 sur­gical manual)

Initial treatment

With Williams' assistance Harlow shaved the scalp around the region of the tamping iron's exit, then removed coagulated blood, small bone fragments, and an ounce [30 g] of protruding brain. After probing for foreign bodies and replacing two large detached pieces of bone, Harlow closed the wound with adhesive straps, leaving it partially open for drainage;Template:Ranchor the entrance wound in the cheek was bandaged only loosely, for the same reason. A wet compress was applied, then a nightcap, then further bandaging to secure these dressings. Harlow also dressed Gage's hands and forearms (which along with his face had been "deeply burned") and ordered that Gage's head remain elevated.

Late that evening Harlow noted: "Mind clear. Constant agitation of his legs, being alternately retracted and extended like the shafts of a fulling mill. Says he 'does not care to see his friends, as he shall be at work in a few days.'" 

Convalescence

The Boston Post for Sep. 21, 1848 (under­stating the diame­ter of Gage's tamping iron and over­stating damage to his jaw)​

Despite his own optimism, Gage's convalescence was long, difficult, and uneven. Though recognizing his mother and uncle (summoned from Lebanon, thirty miles awayTemplate:RanchorTemplate:Ranchor) on the morning after the accident, on the second day he "lost control of his mind, and became decidedly delirious". Two days later he was again "rational ... knows his friends", and after a further week's progress Harlow entertained, for the first time, the thought "that it was possible for Gage to recover ... This improvement, however, was of short duration." 

Beginning September 25Template:Ranchor Gage was semi-comatose, "seldom speaking unless spoken to, and then answering only in monosyllables" and the next day Harlow noted, "Failing strength ... coma deepened; the globe of the left eye became more protuberant, with [granulation tissue] pushing out rapidly from the internal canthus [as well as] from the wounded brain, and coming out at the top of the head." After another day, "The exhalations from the mouth and head [are] horribly fetid. Comatose, but will answer in monosyllables if aroused. Will not take nourishment unless strongly urged. The friends and attendants are in hourly expectancy of his death, and have his coffin and clothes in readiness." 

Galvanized, Harlow "cut off the [granulation tissue] sprouting out from the top of the brain and filling the opening, and made free application of caustic [i.e. crystalline silver nitrate]Template:Ranchor to them. With a scalpel I laid open the [frontalis muscle,Template:Ranchor from the exit wound to the top of the nose] and immediately there were discharged eight ounces [250 ml] of ill-conditioned pus, with blood, and excessively fetid."  ("Gage was lucky to encounter Dr. Harlow when he did," wrote Barker. "Few doctors in 1848 would have had the experience with cerebral abscess with which Harlow left [Jefferson Medical College] and which probably saved Gage's life." Template:Ranchor See § Factors favoring Gage's survival.)

On October 7, Gage "succeeded in raising himself up, and took one step to his chair". One month later he was walking "up and down stairs, and about the house, into the piazza", and while Harlow was absent for a week, Gage was "in the street every day except Sunday", his desire to return to his family in New Hampshire being "uncontrollable by his friends ... got wet feet and a chill." He soon developed a fever, but by mid-November he was "feeling better in every respect ... walking about the house again". Harlow's prognosis at this point: Gage "appears to be in a way of recovering, if he can be controlled." 

Subsequent life and travels

"Disfigured yet still hand­some".Template:Ranchor Note ptosis of the left eye and ab­scess scar on forehead.

By November 25, Gage was strong enough to return to his parents' home in Lebanon, New Hampshire, where by late December he was "riding out, improving both mentally and physically" Template:Ranchor and (as recorded in the notes of a physician who spoke to Gage's mother) "abt. February he was able to do a little work abt. ye horses & barn, feedg. ye cattle &c; that as ye time for ploughing came he was able to do half a day's work after that & bore it well." Template:Ranchor

Injuries

In April 1849 Gage returned to Cavendish and paid a visit to Harlow, who noted at that time loss of vision (and ptosis) of the left eye, a large scar on the forehead (from Harlow's draining of the abscess)Template:Ranchor and

upon the top of the head ... a deep depression, two inches by one and one-half inches [5 cm by 4 cm] wide, beneath which the pulsations of the brain can be perceived. Partial paralysis of the left side of the face. His physical health is good, and I am inclined to say he has recovered. Has no pain in head, but says it has a queer feeling which he is not able to describe." Template:Ranchor

Though a year later some physical weakness remained,Template:Ranchor Harlow later wrote that "physically, the recovery was quite complete during the four years immediately succeeding the injury".Template:Ranchor

New England and New York (1849–1852)

In November 1849 Harvard's Professor of Surgery, Henry Jacob Bigelow, brought Gage to Boston "at very considerable expense [and after having] satisfied himself that the bar had actually passed through the man's head", presented him to a meeting of the Boston Society for Medical Improvement and (possibly) to a Harvard Medical School class.Template:RanchorTemplate:Ranchor (This appears to have been one of the earliest cases of a patient entering a hospital primarily to further medical research, rather than for treatment.) 

Unable to return to his railroad work (see § Early observations) Gage appeared for a time, with his iron, at Barnum's American Museum in New York City (not the later Barnum's circus‍—‌there is no evidence Gage ever exhibited with a troupe or circus, or on a fairground).Template:RanchorTemplate:RanchorTemplate:RanchorTemplate:Ranchor Advertisements have also been found for public appearances by Gage‍—‌which he may have arranged and promoted himself‍—‌in New Hampshire and Vermont,Template:Ranchor supporting Harlow's statement that Gage made public appearances in "most of the larger New England towns".Template:RanchorTemplate:Ranchor (Years later Bigelow wrote that Gage had been "a shrewd and intelligent man and quite disposed to do anything of that sort to turn an honest penny", but had given up such efforts because "[that] sort of thing has not much interest for the general public".Template:RanchorTemplate:Ranchor)

For about eighteen months he worked for the owner of a livery and coach service in Hanover, New Hampshire.Template:RanchorTemplate:Ranchor

Chile and California (1852–1858)

In August 1852, Gage was invited to Chile to work as a long-distance stagecoach driver there, "caring for horses, and often driving a coach heavily laden and drawn by six horses" on the Valparaiso–Santiago route.Template:RanchorTemplate:Ranchor (A visitor wrote that "the departure of the coach was always a great event at Valparaiso‍—‌a crowd of ever-astonished Chilenos assembling every day to witness the phenomenon of one man driving six horses." )

After his health began to fail in mid-1859,Template:Ranchor Gage left Chile for San Francisco, arriving (in his mother's words) "in a feeble condition, having failed very much since he left New Hampshire ... Had many ill turns while in Valparaiso, especially during the last year, and suffered much from hardship and exposure." In San Francisco he recovered under the care of his mother and sister,Template:Ranchor who had relocated there from New Hampshire around the time Gage went to Chile.Template:Ranchor Then, "anxious to work", he found employment with a farmer in Santa Clara.Template:Ranchor

Death

"It is regretted that an autopsy could not have been had, so that the precise condi­tion of the enceph­­a­lon at the time of his death might have been known. [There­fore] the mother and friends, waiving the claims of personal and private affection, with a magna­nimity more than praise­­wor­thy, at my request have cheer­ful­ly placed this skull in my hands, for the benefit of science." Gage's skull (sawn to show interior) and iron, photo­graphed in 1868.​

In February 1860 Gage had several epileptic seizures.Template:RanchorTemplate:Ranchor He lost his job, and (wrote Harlow) as the seizures increased in frequency and severity over the succeeding three months he "continued to work in various places [though he] could not do much".

On May 18 he "left Santa Clara and went home to his mother. At 5 o'clock, A.M., on the 20th, he had a severe convulsion. The family physician was called in, and bled him. The convulsions were repeated frequently during the succeeding day and night," Template:Ranchor and he died during status epilepticus,Template:Ranchor in or nearTemplate:Ranchor San Francisco, late on May 21, 1860, just under twelve years after his injury. He was buried in San Francisco's Lone Mountain Cemetery.

Exhumation

In 1866, Harlow (who had "lost all trace of [Gage], and had well nigh abandoned all expectation of ever hearing from him again") somehow learned that Gage had died in California, and made contact with his family there. At Harlow's request they opened Gage's grave long enough to remove his skull, which the family then personally delivered to Harlow,Template:RanchorTemplate:RanchorTemplate:Ranchor by then a prominent physician, businessman, and civic leader in Woburn, Massachusetts.Template:RanchorTemplate:Ranchor

About a year after the accident, Gage had given his tamping iron to Harvard Medical School's Warren Anatomical Museum, but he later reclaimed itTemplate:RanchorTemplate:Ranchor and made what he called "my iron bar" his "constant companion during the remainder of his life";Template:Ranchor now it too was delivered by Gage's family to Harlow.Template:Ranchor (Though some accounts assert that Gage's iron had been buried with him, there is no evidence for this.Template:Ranchor) After studying them for a triumphalTemplate:Ranchor 1868 retrospective paper on his patientTemplate:Ranchor Harlow redeposited the iron‍—‌this time with the skull‍—‌in the Warren Museum, where they remain on display today.

The iron bears the following inscription, commissioned by Bigelow in conjunction with the iron's first deposit in the Museum (though the date it gives for the accident is one day off, and Phinehas is not the way Gage spelled his nameTemplate:Ranchor):

This is the bar that was shot through the head of Mr. Phinehas^[sic] P. Gage at Cavendish, Vermont, Sept. 14,^[sic] 1848. He fully recovered from the injury & deposited this bar in the Museum of the Medical College of Harvard University. Phinehas P. Gage Lebanon Grafton Cy N–H Jan 6 1850.Template:Ranchor

The date Jan 6 1850 falls within the period during which Gage was in Boston under Bigelow's observation.Template:RanchorTemplate:RanchorTemplate:Ranchor

In 1940 Gage's headless remains were moved to Cypress Lawn Cemetery as part of a mandated relocation of San Francisco's dead to new resting places outside city limits.Template:Ranchor

Excerpt from record book, Lone Mountain Cemetery, San Fran­cisco, reflect­ing the May 23, 1860 inter­ment of Phineas B.^[sic] Gage by under­takers N. Gray & Co.‍

Brain damage and mental changes

The left frontal lobe (red), the forward portion of which was damaged by Gage's injury, per Harlow's digi­tal examina­tion and the digital analy­ses of Ratiu et al. and Van Horn et al.​Template:RanchorTemplate:Ranchor

Extent of brain damage

False-color represen­tations of cere­bral fiber path­ways affect­ed, per Van Horn et al.​Template:Ranchor

Debate about whether the trauma and sub­se­quent infection had damaged both of Gage's frontal lobes (left and right), or only the left, began almost immedi­ate­ly after his accident. The 1994 conclu­sion of Hanna Damasio et al., that damage was bilateral, was drawn not from Gage's skull but from a "Gage-like" one‍—‌a cadaver skull deformed to match the dimen­sions of Gage's.Template:Ranchor Using CT scans of Gage's actual skull, Ratiu et al.Template:Ranchor and Van Horn et al.Template:Ranchor both rejected that conclusion, agreeing with Harlow's belief‍—‌based on probing Gage's wounds with his fingers‍—‌that only the left frontal lobe had been damaged.Template:Ranchor

In addition, Ratiu et al. noted that the hole between the roof of the mouth and the base of the cranium (created as the iron passed through) has a diameter about half that of the iron itself; combining this with the hairline fracture running from behind the exit region down the front of the skull, they concluded that the skull "hinged" open as the iron entered from below, then (once the iron had exited at the top) was pulled closed by the resilience of soft tissues.Template:RanchorTemplate:Ranchor

Van Horn et al. concluded that damage to Gage's white matter (of which they made detailed estimates) was as or more significant to Gage's mental changes than cerebral cortex (gray matter) damage.Template:Ranchor

First-hand reports of mental changes

Gage certainly displayed some kind of change in behavior after his injury,Template:Ranchor but the nature, extent, and duration of this change have been difficult to establish. Only a handful of sources give direct information on what Gage was like (either before or after the accident), the mental changes described after his death were much more dramatic than anything reported while he was alive,Template:Ranchor and few sources are explicit about the period of Gage's life to which their various descriptions of him (which vary widely in their implied level of functional impairment) are meant to apply.Template:Ranchor

Early observations (1849–1852)

Harlow described the pre-accident Gage as hard-working, responsible, and "a great favorite" with the men in his charge, his employers having regarded him as "the most efficient and capable foreman in their employ". But these same employers, after Gage's accident, "considered the change in his mind so marked that they could not give him his place again":

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 grossest 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 operations, which are no sooner arranged than they are abandoned in turn for others appearing more feasible. A child in his intellectual capacity and manifestations, he has the animal passions of a strong man. Previous to his injury, although untrained in the schools, he possessed a well-balanced mind, and was looked upon by those who knew him as a shrewd, smart business man, very energetic and persistent in executing all his plans of operation. In this regard his mind was radically changed, so decidedly that his friends and acquaintances said he was "no longer Gage".Template:Ranchor

"I dressed him, God healed him." Template:Ranchor Dr. J.M. Harlow, who attended Gage after the "rude missile had been shot through his brain", and ob­tained his skull for study after his death, in later life. His interest in phren­ology pre­pared him to accept that Gage's injury changed his behavior.​Template:Ranchor

"The leading feature of this case is its improbabil­ity." Har­vard's H.J. Bige­low in 1854. His train­ing pre­disposed him to mini­mize Gage's behav­ioral changes.​Template:Ranchor

This description ("now routinely quoted", says KotowiczTemplate:Ranchor) is from Harlow's observations set down soon after the accident,Template:RanchorTemplate:Ranchor but Harlow‍—‌perhaps hesitant to describe his patient negatively while he was still aliveTemplate:Ranchor‍—‌left these observations unpublished until 1868, after Gage had died and his family had brought him "what we so much desired to see" (as Harlow termed Gage's skull).Template:Ranchor

In the interim, Harlow's 1848 report, published just as Gage was emerging from his convalescence, only hinted at psychological symptoms:Template:Ranchor

The mental manifestations of the patient, I leave to a future communication. I think the case ... is exceedingly interesting to the enlightened physiologist and intellectual philosopher.Template:Ranchor

But after Bigelow termed Gage "quite recovered in faculties of body and mind", with only "inconsiderable disturbance of function",Template:Ranchor a rejoinder in the American Phrenological Journal‍—‌

That there was no difference in his mental manifestations after the recovery is not true ... The man was gross, profane, coarse, and vulgar, to such a degree that his society was intolerable to decent people.

‍—‌was apparently based on information anonymously supplied by Harlow.Template:Ranchor Barker explains these contradictory evaluations (only six months apart) by differences in Bigelow's and Harlow's educational backgrounds:

Harlow's interest in phrenology prepared him to accept the change in character as a significant clue to cerebral function which merited publication. Bigelow had [been taught] that damage to the cerebral hemispheres had no intellectual effect, and he was unwilling to consider Gage's deficit significant ... The use of a single case [including Gage's] to prove opposing views on phrenology was not uncommon.Template:Ranchor

Later observations (1852–1858)

In 1860, an American physician who had known Gage "well" in Chile reported that Gage remained "engaged in stage driving [and] in the enjoyment of good health, with no impairment whatever of his mental faculties." Template:Ranchor Together with the fact that Gage was hired by his employer in advance, in New England, to be part of the new coaching enterprise in Chile,Template:RanchorTemplate:Ranchor this implies that Gage's most serious mental changes had been temporary, so that the "fitful, irreverent ... capricious and vacillating" Gage described by Harlow (who last saw Gage less than a year after the accident) became, over time, far more functional and socially far better adapted.Template:RanchorTemplate:Ranchor

This conclusion is reinforced (writes psychologist Malcolm Macmillan) by the responsibilities and challenges faced by drivers on the stagecoach route worked by Gage in Chile, including the general requirement that drivers "be reliable, resourceful, and possess great endurance. But above all, they had to have the kind of personality that enabled them to get on well with their passengers." Template:RanchorTemplate:Ranchor A day's work for Gage meant "a 13-hour journey over 100 miles of poor roads, often in times of political instability or frank revolution. All this‍—‌in a land to whose language and customs Phineas arrived an utter stranger‍—‌militates as much against permanent disinhibition [i.e. an inability to plan and self-regulate] as do the extremely complex sensory-motor and cognitive skills required of a coach driver." Template:RanchorTemplate:Ranchor

Social recovery

Macmillan hypothesizes that the contrast between Gage's early post-accident behavior and later post-accident behavior represents a social recovery over time, citing people with similar injuries for whom "someone or something gave enough structure to their lives for them to relearn lost social and personal skills":Template:Ranchor

Phineas' survival and rehabilitation demonstrated a theory of recovery which has influenced the treatment of frontal lobe damage today. In modern treatment, adding structure to tasks by, for example, mentally visualising a written list, is considered a key method in coping with frontal lobe damage.Template:Ranchor

According to a contemporary account by visitors to Chile,Template:Ranchor Gage would have had to

rise early in the morning, prepare himself, and groom, feed, and harness the horses; he had to be at the departure point at a specified time, load the luggage, charge the fares and get the passengers settled; and then had to care for the passengers on the journey, unload their luggage at the destination, and look after the horses. The tasks formed a structure that required control of any impulsiveness he may have had.Template:Ranchor

Enroute (Macmillan continues):

much foresight was required. Drivers had to plan for turns well in advance, and sometimes react quickly to manoeuvre around other coaches, wagons, and birlochos travelling at various speeds ... Adaptation had also to be made to the physical condition of the route: although some sections were well-made, others were dangerously steep and very rough.

Thus Gage's stagecoach work‍—‌"a highly structured environment in which clear sequences of tasks were required [but within which] contingencies requiring foresight and planning arose daily"‍—‌resembles rehabilitation regimens first developed by Soviet neuropsychologist Alexander Luria for the reestablishment of self-regulation in World War II soldiers suffering frontal lobe injuries.Template:Ranchor

Macmillan adds that if Gage made such a recovery‍—‌if he eventually "figured out how to live" (as Fleischman put it)Template:Ranchor despite his injury‍—‌then it "would add to current evidence that rehabilitation can be effective even in difficult and long-standing cases";Template:Ranchor and if Gage could achieve such improvement without medical supervision, "what are the limits for those in formal rehabilitation programs?" Template:Ranchor As author Sam Kean put it, "If even Phineas Gage bounced back‍—‌that's a powerful message of hope." Template:Ranchor

Exaggeration and distortion of mental changes

A moral man, Phineas Gage
Tamping powder down holes for his wage
Blew his special-made probe
Through his left frontal lobe
Now he drinks, swears, and flies in a rage.

— AnonymousTemplate:Ranchor

Macmillan's analysis of scientific and popular accounts of Gage found that they almost always distort and exaggerate his behavioral changes well beyond anything described by anyone who had contact with him. In the words of Barker,Template:Ranchor "As years passed, the case took on a life of its own, accruing novel additions to Gage's story without any factual basis"; even today (writes historian Zbigniew Kotowicz) "Most commentators still rely on hearsay and accept what others have said about Gage, namely, that after the accident he became a psychopath ..." Template:Ranchor and Grafman has written that "the details of [Gage's] social cognitive impairment have occasionally been inferred or even embellished to suit the enthusiasm of the story teller ..." Template:Ranchor

Behaviors ascribed to the post-accident Gage which are either unsupported by, or in contradiction to, the known facts include mistreatment of wife and children (of which Gage had neither); inappropriate sexual behavior, promiscuity, or impaired sexuality; lack of forethought, of concern for the future, or of capacity for embarrassment; parading his self-misery, and vainglory in showing his wounds; inability or refusal to hold a job; irresponsibility and untrustworthiness; aggressiveness and violence; vagrancy and begging; plus drifting, drinking, bragging, lying, brawling, bullying, psychopathy, inability to make ethical decisions, loss of all respect for social conventions, and acting "like an idiot". None of these behaviors was mentioned by anyone who had met Gage or even his family; as Kotowicz put it, "Harlow does not report a single act that Gage should have been ashamed of." Template:Ranchor

For example, a passage by Harlow‍—‌ "'... continued to work in various places;' could not do much, changing often, 'and always finding something that did not suit him in every place he tried'" Template:Ranchor‍—‌has been misinterpreted as meaning Gage could not hold a regular job after his accident, "was prone to quit in a capricious fit or be let go because of poor discipline", "never returned to a fully independent existence", and died "in careless dissipation". In fact, after his initial post-recovery months spent traveling and exhibiting, Gage supported himself‍—‌at a total of just two jobs‍—‌from early 1851 until just before his death in 1860.Template:Ranchor In Kotowicz's words, "What Harlow is telling us is clear and unambiguous: Gage returns from South America to his mother to recuperate. As soon as he is fit, he goes back to work with horses, which is what he has been doing for years." Template:Ranchor (Harlow's "changing often" refers only to Gage's final months, after convulsions had set in, and even then Gage remained "anxious to work".Template:RanchorTemplate:Ranchor)

Theoretical use and misuse

Though Gage is considered the "index case for personality change due to frontal lobe damage" Template:RanchorTemplate:RanchorTemplate:Ranchor his scientific value is undermined by the uncertain extent of his brain damageTemplate:Ranchor and the lack of information about his behavioral changes. Instead, Macmillan writes, "Phineas' story is [primarily] worth remembering because it illustrates how easily a small stock of facts becomes transformed into popular and scientific myth," Template:Ranchor the paucity of evidence having allowed "the fitting of almost any theory [desired] to the small number of facts we have".Template:Ranchor A similar concern was expressed as far back as 1877, when British neurologist David Ferrier (writing to Harvard's Henry Pickering Bowditch in an attempt "to have this case definitely settled") complained that

In investigating reports on diseases and injuries of the brain, I am constantly amazed at the inexactitude and distortion to which they are subject by men who have some pet theory to support. The facts suffer so frightfully ...Template:Ranchor

More recently, neurologist Oliver Sacks refers to the "interpretations and misinterpretations, from 1848 to the present," of Gage, and MacmillanTemplate:RanchorTemplate:RanchorTemplate:Ranchor surveys theoretical use and misuse of Gage.

Cerebral localization

In the nineteenth-century controversy over whether the various mental functions are or are not localized in specific regions of the brain, both sides managed to enlist Gage in support of their theories;Template:RanchorTemplate:Ranchor for example, soon after Dupuy wrote that Gage proved that the brain is not localized, Ferrier cited Gage as proof that it is.

Phrenology

Phrenologists contended that destruc­tion of the mental "organs" of Venera­tion and Benevo­lence (top) caused Gage's behavioral changes.

Throughout the nineteenth century, adherents of phrenology contended that Gage's mental changes (his profanity, for exampleTemplate:Ranchor) resulted from destruction of his mental "organ of Veneration"‍—‌as phrenologists saw it, the part of the brain responsible for "goodness, benevolence, the gentle character ... [and] to dispose man to conduct himself in a manner conformed to the maintenance of social order"‍—‌and/or the adjacent "organ of Benevolence"‍—‌related to religion and God, and respect for peers and those in authority.Template:Ranchor (Phrenology held that the organs of the "grosser and more animal passions are near the base of the brain; literally the lowest and nearest the animal man [while] highest and farthest from the sensual are the moral and religions feelings, as if to be nearest heaven." Thus Veneration and Benevolence are at the apex of the skull‍—‌the region of exit of Gage's tamping iron.)

Psychosurgery and lobotomy

It is frequently said that what happened to Gage played a part in the later development of various forms of psychosurgery, particularly lobotomyTemplate:Ranchor‍—‌or even that Gage's accident constituted "the first lobotomy". Aside from the question of why the unpleasant changes usually (if hyperbolically) attributed to Gage would inspire surgical imitation, there is no such link, according to Macmillan:

There is simply no evidence that any of these operations were deliberately designed to produce the kinds of changes in Gage that were caused by his accident, nor that knowledge of Gage's fate formed part of the rationale for themTemplate:Ranchor‍... [W]hat his case did show came solely from his surviving his accident: major operations [such as for tumors] could be performed on the brain without the outcome necessarily being fatal.Template:Ranchor

Somatic marker hypothesis

A. Damasio, in support of his somatic marker hypothesis (relating decision-making to emotions and their biological underpinnings), draws parallels between behaviors he attributes to Gage and those of modern patients with damage to the orbitofrontal cortex and amygdala. But A. Damasio's depiction of Gage has been criticized by Kotowicz as

grotesque fabrication ... ["perpetrating"] the myth of Gage the psychopath ... Damasio changes [Harlow's] narrative, omits facts, and adds freely ... It seems that the growing commitment to the frontal lobe doctrine of emotions brought Gage to the limelight and shapes how he is described. 

As Kihlstrom put it:

[M]any modern commentators exaggerate the extent of Gage's personality change, perhaps engaging in a kind of retrospective reconstruction based on what we now know, or think we do, about the role of the frontal cortex in self-regulation.Template:Ranchor

Early medical attitudes

Skepticism

"[Few objects] have attract­ed more vis­i­tors and spread farther the fame of the Muse­um"  than its "most val­u­a­ble specimen".

A tone of amused wonderment was common in nineteenth-century medical writing about Gage (as well as about victims of other unlikely-sounding brain-injury accidents, including encounters with axes, bolts, low bridges, exploding firearms, a revolver shot to the nose, more tamping irons, and "even falling gum tree branches").Template:Ranchor The Boston Medical & Surgical Journal, for example, called Gage "the patient whose cerebral organism had been comparatively so little disturbed by its abrupt and intrusive visitor." 

Noting dryly that, "The leading feature of this case is its improbability ... This is the sort of accident that happens in the pantomime at the theater, not elsewhere", Bigelow emphasized that though "at first wholly skeptical, I have been personally convinced", calling the case "perhaps unparalleled in the annals of surgery".Template:Ranchor This endorsement by the Professor of Surgery at Harvard‍—‌"a majestic and authoritative figure on the medical scene of those times" ‍—‌"finally succeeded in forcing [the case's] authenticity upon the credence of the profession ... as could hardly have been done by any one in whose sagacity and surgical knowledge his confrères had any less confidence".

Nonetheless, Harlow later recalled, "a distinguished Professor of Surgery in a distant city" had dismissed Gage as a "Yankee invention":Template:Ranchor

The case occurred nearly twenty years ago, in an obscure country town ..., was attended and reported by an obscure country physician, and was received by the Metropolitan doctors with several grains of caution, insomuch that many utterly refused to believe that the man had risen, until they had thrust their fingers into the hole [in] his head, [see Doubting Thomas] and even then they required of the Country Doctor attested statements, from clergymen and lawyers, before they could or would believe‍—‌many eminent surgeons regarding such an occurrence as a physiological impossibility, the appearances presented by the subject being variously explained away.Template:Ranchor

Indeed (Bigelow said just before Harlow's 1868 presentation of Gage's skull) though "the nature of [Gage's] injury and its reality are now beyond doubt ... I have recd a letter within a month [purporting] to prove that ... the accident could not have happened ",Template:Ranchor and two years later Jackson wrote that

The very small amount of attention that has been given to [the Gage case] can only be explained by the fact that it far transcends any case of recovery from injury of the head that can be found in the records of surgery. It was too monstrous for belief ... 

Standard for other brain injuries

As the reality of Gage's accident and survival gained credence, it became "the standard against which other injuries to the brain were judged". After a miner survived traversal of his skull by a pipe (extracted "not without considerable difficulty and force, owing to a bend in the portion of the rod in his skull") his physician invoked Gage as the "only case comparable with this, in the amount of brain injury, that I have seen reported".

Often these comparisons carried hints of competitiveness, humor, or both,Template:Ranchor as when a Kentucky doctor, reporting a patient's survival of a gunshot to the nose, bragged:

If you Yankees can send a tamping bar through a fellow's brain and not kill him, I guess there are not many can shoot a bullet between a man's mouth and his brains, stopping just short of the medulla oblongata, and not touch either.

Similarly, when a lumbermill foreman returned to work soon after a saw cut three inches (8 cm) into his skull from just between the eyes to behind the top of his head, his surgeon (who had removed from this wound "thirty-two pieces of bone, together with considerable sawdust") termed the case "second to none reported, save the famous tamping-iron case of Dr. Harlow", but apologized that "I cannot well gratify the desire of my professional brethren to possess Mr. Chase's skull, until he has no further use for it himself." 

As these and other remarkable brain-injury survivals accumulated, the Boston Medical & Surgical Journal (1869) pretended to wonder whether the brain has any function at all: "Since the antics of iron bars, gas pipes, and the like skepticism is discomfitted, and dares not utter itself. Brains do not seem to be of much account now-a-days."  The Transactions of the Vermont Medical Society was similarly facetious: "'The times have been,' says Macbeth [Act III], 'that when the brains were out the man would die. But now they rise again.' Quite possibly we shall soon hear that some German professor is exsecting it." 

Portraits

Inscription on iron as seen in portrait: [Phine]has P. Gage at Caven­dish, Vermont, Sept. 14, 1848. He fully

The second portrait of Gage to be identified (2010)​

Two daguerreotype portraits of Gage, identified in 2009 and 2010, are the only likenessesTemplate:RanchorTemplate:RanchorTemplate:Ranchor of him known, other than a life mask taken for Bigelow in late 1849 (and now in the Warren Museum along with Gage's skull and iron).Template:RanchorTemplate:Ranchor The first shows "a disfigured yet still-handsome" GageTemplate:Ranchor with one eye closed and scars clearly visible, "well dressed and confident, even proud" Template:Ranchor and holding his iron, on which portions of its inscription can be made out.Template:Ranchor (For decades the portrait's owners had imagined it showed an injured whaler with his harpoon. Template:Ranchor)

The second portrait, copies of which are in the possession of two different branches of the Gage family, shows Gage in a somewhat different pose, wearing a different shirt and different tie, but the same waistcoat and possibly the same jacket.Template:Ranchor

Authenticity was confirmed in several ways (including photo-overlaying the inscriptions seen in the portraits against that on the actual tamping iron, and matching the subject's injuries to those preserved in the life maskTemplate:Ranchor) but about when, where, and by whom they were taken nothing is known, except that they were created no earlier than January 1850 (when the inscription was added to the tamping iron),Template:Ranchor on different occasions, and are likely by different photographers.Template:Ranchor

The portraits reinforce the social recovery hypothesis already described (see § Social recovery).Template:Ranchor "That [Gage] was any form of vagrant following his injury is belied by these remarkable images", wrote Van Horn et al.Template:Ranchor "Although just one picture," Kean commented in reference to the first image discovered, "it exploded the common image of Gage as a dirty, disheveled misfit. This Phineas was proud, well-dressed, and disarmingly handsome." Template:Ranchor

Factors favoring Gage's survival

"I have the pleas­ure of being able to pres­ent to you [a case] without paral­lel in the annals of surgery." Template:Ranchor Har­low's 1868 presen­tation to the Massachu­setts Medical SocietyTemplate:Ranchor of Gage's skull, iron, and later history.

Harlow saw Gage's survival as demonstrating "the wonderful resources of the system in enduring the shock and in overcoming the effects of so frightful a lesion, and as a beautiful display of the recuperative powers of nature", and listed the circumstances favoring it:

1st. The subject was the man for the case. His physique, will, and capacity of endurance, could scarcely be excelled.

2d. The shape of the missle‍—‌being pointed, round and comparatively smooth, not leaving behind it prolonged concussion or compression.Template:Ranchor

Despite its very large diameter and mass (compared to a weapon-fired projectile) the tamping iron's relatively low velocity drastically reduced the energy available to compressive and concussive "shock waves".Template:Ranchor Ratiu et al.'s conclusion, that Gage's skull "hinged open" as the iron passed through,Template:Ranchor implies a further reduction in such effects because of the increased volume available into which the brain could shift temporarily.

Harlow continued:

3d. The point of entrance outside of the superior maxillary bone‍—‌[the tamping iron] did little injury until it reached the floor of the cranium, when, at the same time that it did irreparable damage, it [created the] opening in the base of the skull, for drainage, [without which] recovery would have been impossible.Template:Ranchor

Barker writes that "[Head injuries] from falls, horse kicks, and gunfire, were well known in pre–Civil War America [and] every contemporary course of lectures on surgery described the diagnosis and treatment" of such injuries. But to Gage's benefit, surgeon Joseph Pancoast had performed "his most celebrated operation for head injury before Harlow's medical school class, [trephining] to drain the pus, resulting in temporary recovery. Unfortunately, symptoms recurred and the patient died. At autopsy, reaccumulated pus was found: granulation tissue had blocked the opening in the dura." By keeping the exit wound open and elevating Gage's head to encourage drainage from the cranium through the hole in the roof of the mouth, Harlow "had not repeated Professor Pancoast's mistake." Template:RanchorTemplate:Ranchor

Finally,

4th. The portion of the brain traversed was, for several reasons, the best fitted of any part of the cerebral substance to sustain the injury.Template:Ranchor

Precisely what Harlow's "several reasons" were is unclear, but he was likely referring, at least in part, to the understanding (slowly developing since ancient times) that injuries to the rear of the brain were especially dangerous, because they frequently interrupted vital functions such as breathing and circulation.Template:Ranchor As British surgeon James Earle wrote in 1790, "[A] great part of the cerebrum may be taken away without destroying the animal, or even depriving it of its faculties, whereas the cerebellum will scarcely admit the smallest injury, without being followed by mortal symptoms." Template:Ranchor

As to his own role, Harlow merely averred, "I can only say ... with good old Ambroise Paré, I dressed him, God healed him",Template:Ranchor but Macmillan calls this self-assessment far too modest.Template:RanchorTemplate:RanchorTemplate:Ranchor Noting that Harlow had been a "relatively inexperienced local physician ... graduated four and a half years earlier",Template:Ranchor Macmillan's discussion of Harlow's "skillful and imaginative adaptation" of "conservative and progressive elements from the available therapies to the particular needs posed by Gage's injuries" emphasizes that he "did not apply rigidly what he had learned", for example foregoing an exhaustive search for bone fragments (which risked hemorrhage and further brain injury) and applying caustic silver nitrate to the granulation tissue instead of excising it (which risked hemorrhage) or forcing it into the wound (which risked compressing the brain).Template:Ranchor

See also

• Anatoli Bugorski‍—‌scientist through whose head a particle-accelerator proton beam accidentally passed
• Eadweard Muybridge‍—‌another early case of head injury leading to mental changes

Sources and further reading

For general audiences (Gage)

H. .

Harlow, John Martyn (1868). "Recovery from the Passage of an Iron Bar through the Head" (PDF). Publications of the Massachusetts Medical Society. 2: 327–47. Reprinted as Recovery from the Passage of an Iron Bar through the Head (David Clapp & Son, 1869). 22 pages.

K. .

Template:Cite article

M. .

Macmillan, Malcolm B. (2000). An Odd Kind of Fame: Stories of Phineas Gage. MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-13363-6 (hbk, 2000) ISBN 0-262-63259-4 (pbk, 2002).  • See also "Corrections to An Odd Kind of Fame".

M1. .

—— (September 2008). "Phineas Gage‍—‌Unravelling the myth" (PDF). The Psychologist. 21 (9). British Psychological Society: 828–31. {{cite journal}}: zero width joiner character in |title= at position 13 (help)

M2. .

—— (July 2009). "More About Phineas Gage, Especially After the Accident". Retrieved July 27, 2013.

M3. .

—— (2012). "The Phineas Gage Information Page". The University of Akron. Retrieved July 22, 2013. Includes:

A. "Phineas Gage Sites in Cavendish".
B. "Phineas Gage: Unanswered questions".
C. "Phineas Gage's Story".
D. "Corrections to An Odd Kind of Fame".
E. "Phineas Gage: Psychosocial Adaptation".

F. "Phineas Gage and Frontal Lobotomies".

M4. .

Macmillan, Malcolm B.; Aggleton, John (March 6, 2011). "Phineas Gage: The man with a hole in his head" (Audio interview). Interviewed by Claudia Hammond; Dave Lee. {{cite interview}}: Unknown parameter |callsign= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |program= ignored (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: interviewers list (link)

For general audiences (portraits)

L. .

Lena, M. L.; Macmillan, Malcolm B. (March 2010). "Picturing Phineas Gage (Invited comment)". Smithsonian. p. 4.

T. .

Twomey, S. (January 2010). "Finding Phineas". Smithsonian. 40 (10): 8–10.

W. .

Wilgus, B. & J. (2009). "Face to Face with Phineas Gage". Journal of the History of the Neurosciences. 18 (3): 340–5. doi:10.1080/09647040903018402. PMID 20183215.

W1. .

—— (July–September 2009). "Phineas Gage – Hiding in Plain Sight". The Daguerreian Society Newsletter. 21 (3): 6–9.

W2. .

—— (2009). "Meet Phineas Gage". Retrieved October 18, 2014.

W3. .

—— (2010). "A New Image of Phineas Gage". Retrieved March 10, 2010.

For middle-school students

F. .

Fleischman, J. (2002). Phineas Gage: A Gruesome but True Story About Brain Science. ISBN 0-618-05252-6.

For researchers and specialists

B. .

Barker, F. G. II (1995). "Phineas among the phrenologists: the American crowbar case and nineteenth-century theories of cerebral localization" (PDF). Journal of Neurosurgery. 82 (4): 672–82. doi:10.3171/jns.1995.82.4.0672. PMID 7897537.

B1. .

Bigelow, Henry Jacob (July 1850). "Dr. Harlow's Case of Recovery from the Passage of an Iron Bar through the Head". American Journal of the Medical Sciences. 20: 13–22.

B2. .

—— (May 12, 1868). "Your favor of April 29th is before me" (manuscript). Letter to M. Jewett. Records of the Warren Anatomical Museum, 1828–1892 (inclusive) (AA 192.5), Harvard Medical Library in the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine.

F1. .

Fuster, Joaquin M. (2008). The prefrontal cortex. Elsevier/Academic Press. p. 172. ISBN 0-12-373644-7.

G. .

Grafman, J. (2002). "The Structured Event Complex and the Human Prefrontal Cortex". pp. 292–310. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195134971.003.0019. ISBN 978-0-195-13497-1. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help); Missing or empty |title= (help); Unknown parameter |editors= ignored (|editor= suggested) (help)

H1. .

Harlow, John Martyn (December 13, 1848). "Passage of an Iron Rod Through the Head" (PDF). Boston Medical & Surgical Journal. 39 (20): 389–93. (Transcription.)

H2. .

—— (January 3, 1849). "Medical Miscellany (letter)". Boston Medical & Surgical Journal. 39: 507. Reproduced in Macmillan (2000), p. 389.

K1. .

Kihlstrom, J. F. (2010). "Social neuroscience: The footprints of Phineas Gage". Social Cognition. 28 (6): 757–82. doi:10.1521/soco.2010.28.6.757.

K2. .

Kotowicz, Z. (2007). "The strange case of Phineas Gage". History of the Human Sciences. 20 (1): 115–31. doi:10.1177/0952695106075178.

M5. .

Macmillan, Malcolm B. (1996). Code, C.; Wallesch, C. W.; Lecours, A. R.; Joanette, U. (eds.). "Phineas Gage: A Case for All Reasons". Classic Cases in Neuropsychology. London: Erlbaum. pp. 243–62. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |displayeditors= ignored (|display-editors= suggested) (help)

M6. .

—— (2000). "Restoring Phineas Gage: A 150th Retrospective". Journal of the History of the Neurosciences. 9 (1): 46–66. doi:10.1076/0964-704X(200004)9:1;1-2;FT046. PMID 11232349.

M7. .

—— (2001). "John Martyn Harlow: Obscure Country Physician?". Journal of the History of the Neurosciences. 10 (2): 149–162. doi:10.1076/jhin.10.2.149.7254. PMID 11512426.

M8. .

——; Lena, M. L. (2010). "Rehabilitating Phineas Gage". Neuropsychological Rehabilitation. 20 (5): 641–658. doi:10.1080/09602011003760527. PMID 20480430.

R. .

Ratiu, P.; Talos, I. F.; Haker, S.; Lieberman, D.; Everett, P. (2004). "The Tale of Phineas Gage, Digitally Remastered". Journal of Neurotrauma. 21 (5): 637–643. doi:10.1089/089771504774129964. PMID 15165371.

R1. .

Ratiu, P.; Talos, I. F. (2004). "The Tale of Phineas Gage, Digitally Remastered". New England Journal of Medicine. 351 (23): e21. doi:10.1056/NEJMicm031024. PMID 15575047.

T2. .

Tyler, K.L.; Tyler, H.R. (1982). "A 'Yankee Invention': the celebrated American crowbar case". Neurology. 32: A191.

V. .

Van Horn, J. D.; Irimia, A.; Torgerson, C. M.; Chambers, M. C.; Kikinis, R.; Toga, A. W. (2012). "Mapping Connectivity Damage in the Case of Phineas Gage". PLoS ONE. 7 (5): e37454. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0037454. PMC 3353935. PMID 22616011.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: unflagged free DOI (link)

Other sources cited

External links

• Warren Anatomical Museum, Center for the History of Medicine, Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine (Harvard Medical School) – Home of Gage's skull and iron.
• Meet Phineas Gage – How the owners of the 2009-identified daguerreotype learned it depicted Gage.
• Phineas Gage roadside memorial, Cavendish, Vermont.