Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Fascinating Case of Phineas Gage

Episode Date: September 10, 2021

On September 13, 1848, a 25-year-old man named Phineas Gage received a horrific brain injury while working on a railroad in Vermont. The odds of anyone surviving such an accident were a million to one. Yet, despite astronomical odds, he survived his injury and he became a case study for neuroscientists ever since. Learn more about Phineas Gage and his incredible story, and how it helped us to understand the workings of the human brain, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On September 13, 1848, a 25-year-old man by the name of Phineas Gage received a horrific brain injury while working on a railroad in Vermont. The odds of anyone surviving such an accident were a million to one. Yet despite astronomical odds, he survived his injury and became a case study for neuroscientists ever since. Learn more about Phineas Gage and his incredible story and how it helped us understand the workings of the human brain on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Do you ever climb into bed ready to sleep only to have your mind's mind. start racing the moment your head hits the pillow? Thoughts bouncing around, replaying the day, or jumping ahead to tomorrow? That is exactly why Catherine Nikolai created Nothing Much Happens. Each episode is a gentle, cozy bedtime story where, well, nothing much happens. No drama,

no tension, nothing you need to follow closely. Just soft narration, calming repetition, and soothing sensory details designed to help your mind slow down and your body relax. It's not about entertainment, it's about rest. And millions of listeners around the world use it every night to quiet their thoughts and finally fall asleep. If you've ever struggled to shut your brain off at night, this might be exactly what you've been missing. You can listen to Nothing Much Happens wherever you get your podcasts. Episodes are every Monday and Thursday.

This episode is sponsored by CuriosityStream. If you're interested in the workings of the human mind, then CuriosityStream has a plethora of programs for you to enjoy. They have shows like Brain Overload, Inside a Virtuoso's Brain, the Curious Mind, and the Brain factory. They have many different shows to explain the different aspects of the workings of the brain and neuroscience. You can enjoy an entire year of CuriosityStream for less than $20. It's so cheap that you almost can't afford to not get it. If you are even remotely curious about the world you live in, go to everything-everywhere.com slash curiosity stream to start your subscription. Once again, that's

everything-dash everywhere.com slash curiosity stream. There's very little we know about the early life of Phineas Gage. To be perfectly honest, if it wasn't for the event I'll be discussing in this episode, Phineas Gage probably would have been unknown to history. In 1823, he was born in New Hampshire, and that's where he was raised. He was of average height and weight, and we know that he was unusually healthy growing up. He was never sick, and based on a single photo that remains, he was quite handsome. At the age of 25, he had become a blasting foreman that worked for railroad companies. He and his crew were probably independent contractors who would work for various railroads in the region. On the day in question, he was working for the Rutland and Burlington Railroad

near the town of Cavendish, Vermont. He and his crew were assigned to blasting away some rock. The process of blasting rock back in 1848 wasn't without risk, but it was something that Phineas would have done many times before, and by all accounts, he was experienced and skilled at the task. Basically, you would drill a hole into the rock with a hammer and an iron spike. Then, you would fill the hole with gunpowder, put some clay or sand behind it, and, and, and, and you would drill a hole into the rock, and very carefully tamped down the gunpowder and the sand. Once everything in the hole was packed, you would light a fuse, get out of the way, and the gunpowder would ignite, blasting away all of the rock around it.

You then clear out the rubble and do it again. Phineas had done this enough times that he had his own tamping rod built by a blacksmith. His rod was made out of solid iron, and it was about three feet seven inches or 1.1 meters long, and one and a quarter inches or 3.2 centimeters in diameter. And just to put that into perspective, the rod was about as thick as your index and middle fingers together. The rod weighed 13 pounds, or 5.9 kilograms. Also, one end of his tamping rod was flat, and the other end was pointed like a javelin. On September 13th at approximately 4.30 p.m., Phineas was tamping gunpowder into the hole.

The exact details are unclear, but as he was pushing the tamping rod down into the hole, he turned his head over his right shoulder and opened his mouth to speak. At that exact moment, the gunpowder detonated. It's believed that someone had forgotten to put sand into the hole on top of the gunpowder, and the tamping rod created a spark against the rock igniting the explosion. The tamping rod flew out of the hole like a bullet being fired out of a gun. In fact, that is exactly what it was, except with considerably more gunpowder and a much larger bullet. The pointed javelin-shaped tamping rod hit Phineas just under his left cheekbone.

It destroyed one of his molders and went behind his left eye and continued going through the left frontal lobe of his brain before exiting through the top of his skull near his hairline. The metal rod landed 25 yards away and landed sticking straight up in the ground. Witnesses described the rod as being bloody and greasy from the fatty brain tissue that it went through. Just to put this into perspective, what went through his head was. head was far, far larger than any bullet. Put two fingers up to your face just below your cheekbone and imagine a hole going through your head that size, let alone a three-foot-long piece of iron going all the way through. The astonishing thing was that Phineas Gage had survived. People just

don't have three-foot-long iron bars going through their head and survive, yet he did. Not only did he survive, but he appeared to be conscious the entire time. He initially had some convulsions, but was walking and talking within minutes of the accident. His friends helped him to a cart, which immediately took him on the three-quarter of a mile trip into town to find a doctor. The doctor in town was named Edward Williams. He met Phineas sitting on the outside of the hotel where he was staying, and he recounted the meeting as follows.

When I drove up, he said, doctor, here's 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 that 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. Gage got up and vomited, and the effort of vomiting pressed out about half a teacup full of the brain through the exit hole at the top of the skull,

which fell upon the floor. Unquote. Over the next few days and weeks, his condition worsened. He slipped into a coma several times. The biggest threat was that of infection. His doctors had to constantly clean his wound and drain out of pus that had built up. Everyone thought he would die, and they had prepared his coffin and burial clothes for this eventuality. However, Phineas didn't die.

24 days after the accident, he was walking up and downstairs and was out on the street. Ten weeks after the accident, he had returned home to his family in New Hampshire. Within four years, he was considered to have been as completely recovered as possible for a man that had a large metal rod shot through his head. He had lost vision in his left eye, and there was some paralysis in his face. But other than that, he appeared to be physically recovered. However, not everything was the same. So far, this is just a fascinating story of a guy who survived an incredible accident.

What made this case something which people are still studying today is what people observed after. Prior to the accident, Phineas Gage was considered a hardworking, responsible man that pretty much everybody got along with. However, immediately after the accident, his personality had changed completely. His memory and intellectual faculties did not seem to be impaired, but his personality was radically different. his primary doctor John Harlow wrote the following about his personality changes. Quote, The equilibrium or balanced, 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 in 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 businessman,

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, unquote. A year after his accident, he was taken to Boston where he was examined at the Harvard University Medical School. The professors there had to verify for themselves his injury because it was such an incredible claim. The story of Phineas Gage had preceded him, and almost everyone thought it was a hoax because surely no one could survive such an accident. The doctors were called doubting Thomas's because the doctor. they wouldn't believe it for themselves until they put their fingers in the hole. Gage became an almost impossible experiment for researchers showing the importance and role of the

brain's frontal lobe. Of course, the case was also used by practitioners of phreniology to support their theories as well. After a short stint of museum visits and a tour of towns in New England, Gage went back to work. In 1852, just four years after his accident, he left the United States to work as a stagecoach driver in Chile. He remained there for eight years. During this time, he wasn't observed by doctors, and much of what happened to him went undocumented. One of the biggest surprises is that most of his personality changes had vanished. He mostly returned to normal. This fact is often overlooked by people who study Phineas Gage, and in some ways, it's even more remarkable than his initial personality change. Eventually, he began to suffer severe epileptic seizures,

and he returned to the United States in 1860. He stayed briefly with his mother in San Francisco, where he died soon after returning at the age of 36. His death was almost certainly linked to his accident, even though he had managed to live afterwards for 12 years. It is estimated that two-thirds of introductory psychology textbooks mentioned Phineas Gage. Since his death, he has been mentioned in many other books and studies.

Complete 3D computer models of his skull and the path the metal rod took have been created. His accident offered early medical researchers a glimpse into the workings of the human brain, even if his case has been interpreted many different ways by researchers over the years. Several years after his death, his family exhumed his body and donated his skull to the Harvard Medical School's Warn Anatomical Museum. His skull and his iron tamping bar that he carried with him the rest of his life are still on display today and are the museum's most popular exhibits. The associate producers of Everything Everywhere Daily are Peter Bennett and Thor Thompson. Today's review comes from listener Mirix over at Podcast Addict.

They write, Thank you for igniting my curiosity. You are an excellent storyteller. Well, thank you very much, Mirix. I get a lot of suggestions from people on show ideas, and more often than not, they just give me facts or trivia. While each episode isn't very long, there always has to be a story there,

beyond just an interesting fact. Remember, if you leave a review or send me a question, question, you two can have it read on the show.