File:Phineas_Gage_Cased_Daguerreotype_WilgusPhoto2008-12-19_EnhancedRetouched_Color.jpg · Wikimedia Commons · See Wikimedia Commons
Phineas Gage
Sign in to saveAlso known as Phineas P. Gage, The American Crowbar Case
19th century American railway worker who survived a large brain trauma
Key facts
- Born
- July 9, 1823 (date uncertain), Grafton County, New Hampshire , U.S.
- Died
- May 21, 1860 (1860-05-21) (aged 36), San Francisco Bay Area , California, U.S.
- Cause of death
- Status epilepticus
- Burial place
- Cypress Lawn Memorial Park , California (skull in Warren Anatomical Museum , Boston)
- Occupations
- Railroad construction foreman blaster stagecoach driver
- Known for
- Personality change after brain injury
- Spouse
- None
- Children
- None
via Wikipedia infobox
Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- human
- Given name
- Phineas
- Gender
- male
- Citizenship
- United States
- Place of birth
- Grafton County
- Place of death
- San Francisco
- Languages spoken
- English language
- Image
- Phineas Gage Cased Daguerreotype WilgusPhoto2008-12-19 EnhancedRetouched Color.jpg
Show 10 more facts
- medical condition
- one-eyed
- Commons category
- Phineas Gage
- date of death
- 1860-05-21
- Commons gallery
- Phineas Gage
- date of birth
- 1823-07-09
- patient of
- John Martyn Harlow
- place of burial
- Cypress Lawn Memorial Park
- name in native language
- Phineas Gage
- manner of death
- natural causes
- cause of death
- status epilepticus
Sources (1)
via Wikidata · CC0
~40 min read
Encyclopedic overview
Phineas P. Gage (1823–1860) was an American railroad construction foreman remembered for his improbable survival of an 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 sufficiently profound that friends saw him (for a time at least) 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 the brain's role in determining personality, and that damage to specific parts of the brain might induce specific mental changes.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Phineas Gage” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.