Anita's Notebook

Phineas Gage survived a bizarre accident that should have killed him but instead changed his life forever. The strangest changes were within himself…

THE TAMPING IRON

Phineas Gage was a strong, responsible man known amongst his friends and co-workers for his level-headed decision making.

He worked in Vermont as a foreman of a group of men that spent their days blasting through rock to make way for a railroad line that was planned for the area. He was well loved by his co-workers and considered the best foreman in the company by his employers.

One of his main duties at work was to put blasting powder and some other ingredients (like sand to keep it from blowing up before the fuse was lit) in a pre-drilled hole in the rock and then cram it all in with an iron rod called a tamping iron.

The tamping iron that Gage used was said to be ‘like no other’ because he’d had it custom made by a blacksmith that he knew. As far as to the specifics of why this tamping iron was like no other I’m not sure, but probably part of it was that one end was tapered which was apparently unusual for this kind of tool at the time.

After the mixture of blasting powder and other ingredients were sufficiently crammed into the rock then the fuse would be lit and the rock would be blasted apart, helping clear the way for the railroad to come through.


80 FEET AWAY

But one day as he was cramming the ingredients into the rock the blasting powder exploded on it’s own. It flung the thirteen pound metal tamping rod up towards Gage and hit his cheek, going right through his face behind his left eye and then out through the top of his head to land on the ground 80 feet away.

Yeah seriously, holy crap right? This is something you’d expect to have killed him or at the very least knocked him out cold but instead he was able to get up off the ground within a few minutes and even walk and talk.

He was taken by horse and carriage to a doctor, who later wrote this about the gruesome encounter [ warning it's graphic ]:

I first noticed the wound upon the head before I alighted from my carriage, the pulsations of the brain being very distinct. 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.

Oh my fucking god. A teacupful, really …did he have to go there?

Another doctor which saw Gage later said of him:

He recognized me at once, and said he hoped he was not much hurt.

Well…yes and no on that one…


NO LONGER GAGE

After his initial mobility following the accident, Gage became practically comatose to the point that the people around him thought he was going to die at any moment and even had a coffin along with the outfit he was to be buried in ready at all times.

But in the span of only a few months he was able to recover enough to walk around and eventually travel to his parent’s house which was in a completely different state. This was an amazing recovery for someone who not too long ago had a big metal rod blasted straight through his skull.

However there was a price for his survival, after his accident there was an extreme change in his personality that could not be ignored no matter how hard people tried. The man who was once so level headed and reliable was now transformed into someone perpetually impatient and quick to lash out in anger.

He had a hard time getting along with the people around him, sometimes shouting vulgar profanities and not being able to stop himself from indulging in one crazy scheme after another.

The change in his behavior and personality was so pronounced that the railroad company that used to consider him their best foreman now found that they couldn’t hire him back under any circumstances. And his friends lamented the loss of the person they once knew, saying that he was ‘no longer Gage’.


THE STAGE COACH DRIVER

Phineas Gage made a physical recovery under the care of his parents at their farm but his mental recovery would take years. The damage to his personality and social skills meant that he had to re-learn how to control himself and get along in society.

It’s a mystery how he went about this, was there someone helping him along or did he seek out to make these changes himself? His mother described him as eager to work and I bet that had a big part to play in his progress, it would be tough for someone to make such big strides unless they had strong motivation to do so.

At first he ended up working as part of Barnum’s American Museum in New York where people paid to see him and the tamping iron on display while marveling at the dramatic story of his accident and survival. After a while he moved into steady work taking care of horses for a stable as he progressed in his recovery.

Ultimately he ended up in Chile and had made so much progress by that point that he was working as a stage coach driver doing a route between two major cities, something that required a lot of responsibility, mental focus, and people skills.

Seems like he was pretty happy at his job, only leaving it after he fell ill and had to retreat to California where his mother and sister lived.


MY IRON BAR

Under the care of his family Gage was able to get some of his health back, enough to do farm work in the area and earn a living again for a while.

But after some time he started to have epileptic attacks of increasing frequency …he’d been living on borrowed time and the old injury was finally catching up to him in full.

With the seizures came a sharp flip in personality again that was uncontrollable this time around, he became restless and quarrelsome, not getting along with the people at work and ending up moving from job to job.

Finally he died a little under twelve years after his accident. He was buried near where his family lived in San Fransisco and was laid to rest with the iron rod that had changed his life.

That might seem kind of weird but it actually makes sense that Gage would be buried with the tamping rod. He had carried it around with him for most of the time after his accident (only parting with it for a short period to lend it to a museum) and always referred to it as ‘my iron bar’. His life and his death were tied to that iron bar, if it wasn’t for it’s custom-made tapered end his face probably would have been shattered by the impact and he would have died the day of the accident. But of course the iron bar also caused his death, in the end.

He has forever after been used as a case study for extreme brain injury, often with people wildly exaggerating or completely making up things about his life and the effects of the accident. Which to me seems pretty crazy since the truth of his story is just so incredibly remarkable.

The most remarkable part by far though is that not only was he able to survive such a bizarre accident but he also overcame the mental effects of it without any kind of formal therapy. What did it take for him to achieve a semblance of a normal life after such an accident? We might never know the details but one thing’s for sure, he was quite an amazing person.