Phineas Gage

Who was Phineas Gage?

Phineas P. Gage was an American railroad construction foreman remembered for his improbable 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 12 years of his life, effects so profound that friends saw him as "no longer Gage".

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 19th-century discussion about the mind and brain, particularly debate on cerebral localization, and was perhaps the first case to suggest that damage to specific parts of the brain might affect personality.

Gage is a fixture in the curricula of neurology, psychology and related disciplines, and is frequently mentioned in books and academic papers; he even has a minor place in popular culture. Despite this celebrity the body of established fact about Gage and what he was like is small, which has allowed "the fitting of almost any theory [desired] to the small number of facts we have"—Gage having been cited, over the years, in support of various theories of the brain entirely inconsistent with one another. A survey of published accounts, including scientific ones, has found that they almost always severely distort Gage's behavioral changes, exaggerating the known facts when not directly contradicting them.