If a person's head is pierced by steel bars, is there any way for him to live? Phineas Gage gave a positive answer, and his deeds were selected as ten classic cases in psychology and included in the world's most famous scientific journal, Science.
Gage was born in the United States and was responsible for blasting rock at a railroad site in Vermont. On September 13, 1848, he tamped explosives into the ground in order to build a new railway.
When he rammed an iron rod to fill the hole with glycerin explosives, a Spark accidentally ignited the explosives. His head was tilted to the side, and the pre-detonated glycerin explosives blew away the iron rammer in his hand and penetrated his head from under his left cheekbone, tearing the tissue of the left frontal lobe of his brain, shooting out of the brow bone, falling more than 20 meters behind him.
The rammed iron is about 1.1 meters long and weighs 5.04 kilograms, with a diameter of 3.18 cm at one end and 0.64 cm at the other.
Shockingly, Gage didn't die immediately after being knocked down by the rammed iron, and didn't even faint. He was only dizzy for a few seconds, and then he got up from the ground, carrying a terrible wound, and consciously asked someone to call him a doctor.
Gage injured a simulated statue
That afternoon, Harlow, the doctor who treated Gage, arrived and saw Gage stumble upstairs, into his room, and lie on the bed, covered in blood that almost soaked the entire sheet.
During the treatment, he claimed that a blood clot and a small amount of greasy brain plasma slid into Gage's throat and made him very nauseous, so he vomited every 20 minutes. Incredibly, Gage didn't frown a bit from beginning to end, and even very sensibly claimed that he would go back to continue the blasting in two days.
Due to his serious injuries, Gage went blind in his left eye and was sutured together, but his condition continued to worsen until two months after the incident, when he recovered and returned home.
Skull restoration and Gage photographs
When his strength gradually recovered, he also returned to the construction site. The co-workers found that although he had a hole in his head, his words were as usual, his thinking was clear, and there was no pain, and he was amazed, thinking that "God is blessing him."
But it won't end so simply.
In the subsequent work, the co-workers found that Gage's temperament had changed drastically, and he was originally a small leader of a beloved workers' group and was in a key position in the group work. But after recovering, he became capricious, unable to make effective decisions, and even violently argued with people who refuted his opinions. In addition, he also began to like the skirts of strange women on the road. In the end, he was fired by the company and became a downcast man living on the street.
A few years later, Gage died at the age of 36, on May 21, 1860. Later, Harlow, the doctor who treated Gage, also persuaded Gage's sister to get Gage's skull, and Harlow also wrote a complete case report.
Gage skull
It turned out that the left frontal lobe of Gage's mind was damaged, and as psychological research progressed, scientists found that the frontal lobe was related to all activities of the brain, in particular, the frontal lobe played an important role in controlling nerve impulses. The most important of these is to control emotions and then control people's behavior. Gage's rude and irrational behavior is caused by damage to the frontal lobe.
With the case of Gage, scientists have made important breakthroughs in the study of the effect of the brain on human behavior, and Gicky's story has become legendary, and even worshipped by American youth.