Phineas Gage

Neuroscience's Most Famous Patient

On September 13, 1848, a railroad foreman named Phineas Gage filled a drill hole with gunpowder and turned his head to check on his men. It was the last normal moment of his life.
Phineas Gage (1823-1860) is 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 twelve years of his life - effects so profound that friends saw him as 'no longer Gage.'