Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot Com. Hello and welcomed the podcast. I'm
Speaker 1: Tracy he Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. Today we have
Speaker 1: a massively popular listener request. Yeah, it's one of our
Speaker 1: most requested of all times. So many people have asked
Speaker 1: us about to talk about Phineas Gauge, and we are
Speaker 1: coming up on the hundred and sixty five anniversary of
Speaker 1: the accident that made him and his brain famous. So
Speaker 1: here we go. I'm gonna talk about him. So today,
Speaker 1: it's pretty close to common knowledge that different parts of
Speaker 1: your brain have different functions and responsibilities, and this was
Speaker 1: far from the case back in when an explosion sent
Speaker 1: an iron rod through Phineas Gage's head, destroying his left
Speaker 1: frontal lobe. Unlike anyone else in known history who had
Speaker 1: ever experienced such a catastrophic brain in jury at that point,
Speaker 1: he lived, although altered, for more than eleven more years.
Speaker 1: Over time since then, he's kind of morphed into one
Speaker 1: of the world's most famous case studies and how damage
Speaker 1: to the brain can affect behavior, some of which is
Speaker 1: legit and some of which is made up. So we
Speaker 1: will talk about that in more detail. I'm holding back
Speaker 1: my desire to talk about Futurama and Fries messed up brain.
Speaker 1: But anybody who watches Futurama knows what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1: Uh So, we don't really know much about phineas though
Speaker 1: before his accident, now, before he got put on the
Speaker 1: map by the spike, his life really wasn't recorded. We
Speaker 1: know he was twenty five on September eighteen forty eight
Speaker 1: when the incident happened, and at the time he was
Speaker 1: the foreman of a railroad crew worked and they were
Speaker 1: at that time working on the bed for the Rutland
Speaker 1: and Burlington Railroad. He was, in the words of a
Speaker 1: letter written by his doctor to the editor of the
Speaker 1: Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, in quote of middles Notcher,
Speaker 1: vigorous physical organization, temperate habits, and possessed of considerable energy
Speaker 1: of character. He was also a good foreman with a
Speaker 1: good reputation, and he was competent at his job and
Speaker 1: really good at managing the crew, who were all pretty
Speaker 1: fond of him. And as you can imagine, building a railroad,
Speaker 1: particularly at that time, was a really heavily manual process.
Speaker 1: When they had to cut through a hill, the crew
Speaker 1: would have to blast their way through rock, and one
Speaker 1: group of men would be preparing for the charge to
Speaker 1: be laid, and another had to be ready to clear
Speaker 1: away the rubble that happened afterward. And his foreman, Phineas,
Speaker 1: was responsible for the overall operation of these activities, and
Speaker 1: he was the one who was in charge of making
Speaker 1: sure the detonations when as planned, which he had been
Speaker 1: doing without incident. He was successful until that fateful day. Right, So,
Speaker 1: while they were blasting through rock, Phineas used a tamping iron.
Speaker 1: This is an iron rod that was forty three inches
Speaker 1: long one and a quarter inches in diameter, which one
Speaker 1: end of it tapered to a point that was a
Speaker 1: quarter engine diameter, and it weighed thirteen and a quarter pounds,
Speaker 1: So this thing was longer than your typical baseball bat,
Speaker 1: and it was made of iron. And first they would
Speaker 1: make a hole, and they'd put gunpowder into the bottom
Speaker 1: of this hole, and then uh Phineas would use the
Speaker 1: pointed end of his tamping iron to put the fuse
Speaker 1: into place, and they'd fill the rest of the hole
Speaker 1: of soil, and then he would use the broad end
Speaker 1: of the iron to tamp down the dirt before they
Speaker 1: lit the fuse. He and his crew were working on
Speaker 1: a stretch of track near Cavendish, Vermont, which is a
Speaker 1: town that had about people. Walton H. Green described where
Speaker 1: this happened, and it could actually describe two different cuts
Speaker 1: along the track. So we're not sure precisely where it happened,
Speaker 1: but we've got a narrowed down, so he said, at
Speaker 1: the second cut south of Cavendish, where many potholes in
Speaker 1: the rock give indisputable evidence that Black River once went
Speaker 1: this way, near where Roswell down Er built his lime
Speaker 1: kiln later. I love that method of giving direction. Later
Speaker 1: on there would be a lime kiln, but it wasn't
Speaker 1: there at the time. Uh. When the accident happened, they
Speaker 1: had made the hole and already poured the powder in,
Speaker 1: but they hadn't covered it up with sand yet. So
Speaker 1: while he was getting ready to tamp it down, Phineas
Speaker 1: turned his head away from what he was doing, and
Speaker 1: it seems as though he wrongly thought the gunpowder had
Speaker 1: already been covered with sand, but of course, as we said,
Speaker 1: it had not, and he lowered the rod to tamp
Speaker 1: it down and hit the rock and it made a
Speaker 1: spark and at that point the charge exploded. The tamping
Speaker 1: iron flew upward. It entered under his left cheekbone and
Speaker 1: traveled through the roof of his mouth and behind his eye,
Speaker 1: through his brain, and out his skull completely. I I
Speaker 1: was misunderstanding this in my earlier like my knowledge pre
Speaker 1: podcast knowledge of this, I sort of thought it had logged,
Speaker 1: lodged somewhere, no know it traveled completely through his head
Speaker 1: and landed several yards away. So this destroyed his skull
Speaker 1: in several places, along with obviously part of his brain.
Speaker 1: It also pushed against the back of his eyeballs and
Speaker 1: his eye was sort of protruding a little bit. He
Speaker 1: lost a whole lot of blood from the resulting face
Speaker 1: and scalp wounds and the damage to the vessels that
Speaker 1: were inside of his brain. And I I want to
Speaker 1: go back and look because I think, similar to how
Speaker 1: you had the vision of it being lodged, I always
Speaker 1: had a vision of it being a spike from above.
Speaker 1: And I think it might have been a drawing or
Speaker 1: a piece of art at some point that was attributed
Speaker 1: as being Phineas gaged that someone drew that might have
Speaker 1: had it that way, because I have the same image
Speaker 1: in my head of it being a lodged thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: my understanding of this whole accident was completely incorrect before
Speaker 1: I learned more about it. It came up from underneath
Speaker 1: under his his cheekbone. I know, it's it's crazy. In
Speaker 1: the words of a news article in the Boston Post,
Speaker 1: which was picked up from the leadlow Vermont Free Soil
Speaker 1: Union quote, the most singular circumstance connected with this melancholy
Speaker 1: affair is that he was alive at two o'clock this
Speaker 1: afternoon and in full possession of his reason and free
Speaker 1: from pain. Just let that sit there for a minute.
Speaker 1: So not only did he live through this experience, he
Speaker 1: may not have even lost consciousness, although there was a
Speaker 1: lot of dust and debris following the explosion that had
Speaker 1: to settle before people got to him. If he did
Speaker 1: lose conscious it was really brief. He was able to
Speaker 1: sit upright in the cart while being taken to town
Speaker 1: for a doctor, and once he got there he was
Speaker 1: able to walk with you know, with some help up
Speaker 1: the stairs, which is also studying. Yeah, I can't imagine
Speaker 1: who volunteered to help him, you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: Can you imagine like that? I don't. I don't want
Speaker 1: to do it. Well, he was, Yeah, he was kind
Speaker 1: of he was a favored a favored boss by the crew.
Speaker 1: They were all fine of him, and I think they
Speaker 1: had to have been a bit gruesome. It was definitely gruesome.
Speaker 1: It's gonna get more gruesome. So if you are tender
Speaker 1: of stomach, let's just say that this may may want
Speaker 1: to just fast forward grace for impact, have a friend
Speaker 1: screen at first something, because it does get really gross. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I I skip over some bits that are particularly disgusting
Speaker 1: because it got to a point when I was reading
Speaker 1: the day by day notes of what happened is kind
Speaker 1: of gross. Yeah, it'll make you squirm, it will. Uh.
Speaker 1: So in town, Phineas went to Joseph adams Inn, you know,
Speaker 1: his tavern, and the town's doctor, doctor John Martin Harlowe,
Speaker 1: wasn't available right away. They couldn't find him, so someone
Speaker 1: rode to another nearby town to summon their doctor, who
Speaker 1: was Dr Edward Williams. And once Williams got there, Phineas
Speaker 1: was feeling well enough to say, well, here's work enough
Speaker 1: for you, doctor. Yeah. Yeah, So about an hour later
Speaker 1: Dr Harlow got there. He and Dr Williams conferred with
Speaker 1: each other and eventually decided that Dr Harlow would be
Speaker 1: the one to treat phineas. And here's a side note.
Speaker 1: We've kind of beat this into the ground at this point.
Speaker 1: If you're tired of hearing it, sorry. The whole thing
Speaker 1: was so horrifying and improbable that neither of the doctors
Speaker 1: nor a reverend who happened to see them going by
Speaker 1: on the way to get the doctor, believed what they
Speaker 1: what the crew told them had happened. They were like,
Speaker 1: no way, that is impossible. What you were saying cannot
Speaker 1: have just happened. Um. They didn't believe it until they
Speaker 1: saw the rod in the scene of the accident, where
Speaker 1: there was blood and brain matter everywhere, And our knowledge
Speaker 1: of the brain wasn't the only thing that was vastly
Speaker 1: different in uh. Medical practice was at a completely different
Speaker 1: point of its evolution. But the germ theory of disease
Speaker 1: had not really happened yet. It was still to come.
Speaker 1: So many doctors were treating illnesses by balancing humors because
Speaker 1: they didn't realize the issues of germs in bacteria and
Speaker 1: more commination. Dr Harlow specifically had graduated with his m d.
Speaker 1: From Jefferson Medical Ledge in four although he probably also
Speaker 1: studied at Castleton Medical College in Vermont and the Philadelphia
Speaker 1: School of Anatomy before he went to Jefferson. His medical
Speaker 1: practice was often focused on antiphlogistic principles, and today that
Speaker 1: just means anti inflammatory, but at the time it was
Speaker 1: this body of ideas that disease came from various sources
Speaker 1: of over stimulation or excess which needed to be balanced
Speaker 1: in order for the person to be cured. So a
Speaker 1: lot of common techniques were bleeding, cupping, applying leeches, and
Speaker 1: giving people laxatives and emetics to make them throw up.
Speaker 1: Dr Harlow actually credited how much blood Phineas had lost
Speaker 1: at the scene of the accident um with helping him
Speaker 1: to eventually recover, and the way he described described this
Speaker 1: was quote, may we not infer that this prepared the
Speaker 1: system for the trying ordeal through which it was about
Speaker 1: to pass? Some interesting medical concept. Yeah, Well, there's like
Speaker 1: a tiny piece of truth to it, the fact that
Speaker 1: he had this open injury instead of it like being
Speaker 1: a closed injury, and like his brain had room to
Speaker 1: swell without it putting pressure on itself like that Actually
Speaker 1: is true, but probably the massive blood luff did not
Speaker 1: in fact make it easier overall for his body to heal. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and Dr Harlow also was a follower of phrenology, which
Speaker 1: you may have heard of. It's that concept that the
Speaker 1: different parts of the skull relate to different parts of
Speaker 1: a person's character, and that was a really common belief
Speaker 1: at the time. Yeah, people have probably seen those pictures
Speaker 1: of skulls that have the little um grid lines drawn
Speaker 1: around them and they're labeled with what their particular area
Speaker 1: pertains to in the person's behavior of personality. There were
Speaker 1: no antibiotics or surgical disinfectants then, and handwashing before a
Speaker 1: medical procedure was not even a standard practice. So most
Speaker 1: of what doctor Harlow did was to clean out obvious
Speaker 1: dirt like loose brain tissue and bone fragments out of
Speaker 1: the wound um and to try to replace the biggest
Speaker 1: pieces of the top of the skull, sort of put
Speaker 1: them back in place um, and then close up the
Speaker 1: scalp and bandage the whole thing. He also treated and
Speaker 1: dressed some pretty extensive burns on Phineas's arms and hands. Uh.
Speaker 1: Everyone had been so distracted by the dramatic facial and
Speaker 1: head injury that they didn't notice his injuries at first,
Speaker 1: but of course this was an explosion related injury, so
Speaker 1: it makes sense that he would have had other damage.
Speaker 1: During the first few days after his injury, Phineas did
Speaker 1: surprisingly well. I mean, he was definitely very ill, but
Speaker 1: he continued to ask after the work on the railroad.
Speaker 1: He would ask who was acting as the foreman while
Speaker 1: he wasn't there. He also declined to see his friends,
Speaker 1: saying that he would be back at work in the
Speaker 1: day too, so he didn't really need to have visitors.
Speaker 1: Um the bleeding gradually slowed and he was more or
Speaker 1: less able to sleep, but then he started to develop
Speaker 1: abscesses and fevers and the wound became fitted. Dr Harlow's
Speaker 1: response was to balance the humors, prescribing a medics and
Speaker 1: lass laxatives as well as silver nitrate to treat what
Speaker 1: he described as quote fungus, which may have actually been
Speaker 1: fungus coming from the brain. It's pretty disgusting. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's not a short walk to presume that, uh uh,
Speaker 1: the wound of this nature treated in the manner it
Speaker 1: was would have some infection issues. Yeah. He also bled
Speaker 1: Phineas and drained the pus from the wound, both of
Speaker 1: which were motivated by this idea of getting rid of
Speaker 1: the excess and balancing the humors. But of all the things,
Speaker 1: they may have been of actual real medical use in
Speaker 1: this case, since they would have reduced some of the
Speaker 1: pressure going on inside of his skull and in the
Speaker 1: case of the pus, removed infectious material from his body.
Speaker 1: And Phineas had been able to see a little out
Speaker 1: of his left eye for a while after the acts it,
Speaker 1: but he did eventually lose all sight in it, along
Speaker 1: with the ability to open it, so it's kind of
Speaker 1: permanently shut. Right. He got a lot worse before he
Speaker 1: started to get better, and at some points he was
Speaker 1: nearly comatose. In September, his friends and family went ahead
Speaker 1: and picked out a coffin and decided what clothes they
Speaker 1: were going to give they were going to put on
Speaker 1: him to be buried in, and at least one of
Speaker 1: the people attending him so that they should stop treating
Speaker 1: him since it was just prolonging the inevitable. But eventually
Speaker 1: he started to rally and changes in his behavior began
Speaker 1: to be apparent. While he was still under Dr Harlowe's care.
Speaker 1: For example, on October eleven, Doctor Harlow offered him one
Speaker 1: thousand dollars for some pebbles that he had collected, and
Speaker 1: Phineas refused. A little later in October, when he was
Speaker 1: really starting to improve pretty steadily after that dramatic downturn,
Speaker 1: he decided he was ready to go home and he
Speaker 1: planned to walk there. It was twenty miles away, so
Speaker 1: he went out shopping for some provisions he was going
Speaker 1: to need, and he did so in bare feet with
Speaker 1: no coat on. So remember this was Vermont. This exposure
Speaker 1: set him back a little bit, but by the end
Speaker 1: of November he was able to go home to his family.
Speaker 1: So obviously he was having some judgment issues at that point.
Speaker 1: He you know, would turn down a large sum of
Speaker 1: money for for some rocks, for some rocks which who
Speaker 1: wouldn't want to take? I would take a thousand dollars
Speaker 1: for pebbles right now? Uh. And then he put himself
Speaker 1: in danger kind of thoughtlessly. But Dr Harlowe attended to
Speaker 1: him for ten weeks. Uh. And then Phineas went home
Speaker 1: to Lebanon, New Hampshire by carriage and he stayed until
Speaker 1: April continuing to recuperate. So, of course, one of the
Speaker 1: things I mean, apart from having his brain partially destroyed
Speaker 1: by a giant iron rod, one of the things that
Speaker 1: he is really famous for is for the change in
Speaker 1: behavior that came afterwards. Um, a lot of this is
Speaker 1: portrayed is like he just became unable to work and
Speaker 1: unable to hold a job, and that's not really accurate.
Speaker 1: His recuperation did continue to be pretty slow even after
Speaker 1: he left Dr Harlowe's care, but he really wanted to
Speaker 1: get back to work and he started working on his
Speaker 1: parents farm. By the middle of the following year, which
Speaker 1: was eighteen forty nine, he was barely able to do
Speaker 1: a whole day's work there. So even as he was
Speaker 1: recovering seemingly pretty well physically, his personality had changed. And
Speaker 1: we described him before the accident as being very smart, competent,
Speaker 1: and reliable, But after the accident, Dr Harlowe described him
Speaker 1: as fitful, irreverent, indulging at times in the grossest profanity,
Speaker 1: which had not previously been his custom manifesting but little
Speaker 1: deference for his fellows, impatient of restraint or advice when
Speaker 1: it conflicts with his desires at times pertinaciously obstinate, yet
Speaker 1: capricious and vacillating, devising many plans of future operation which
Speaker 1: are no sooner arranged than they are abandoned in turn
Speaker 1: for others, appearing more feasible at child in his intellectual
Speaker 1: capacity and manifestations, he has the animal passions of a
Speaker 1: strong man. So most of what we know about Phineas's
Speaker 1: behavior after the accident comes from Dr Harlow, and there's
Speaker 1: a little bit of question today as to whether this
Speaker 1: account is entirely reliable. His belief in phrenology might have
Speaker 1: colored his perception of Phineas's behavior, especially considering that some
Speaker 1: of his writings about him include specific phrenological terms such
Speaker 1: as nervo bilious. But regardless even his friends and acquaintances,
Speaker 1: we're saying that he was no longer gauge Uh. Consequently,
Speaker 1: when he felt physically ready to return to work again,
Speaker 1: his old employer wouldn't have him back. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of popular writing about him today that sort of characterizes
Speaker 1: him at this point as a completely unreliable, unemployable, violent drifter. Um.
Speaker 1: This is completely inaccurate. He did find steady work after
Speaker 1: he recovered, although that did not involve handling explosives anymore,
Speaker 1: which would make sense. He went to Boston for a
Speaker 1: while in eighteen fifty where he was under the observation
Speaker 1: of Henry J. Bigelow of Harvard, and he presented at
Speaker 1: the Boston He was presented at the Boston Society for
Speaker 1: Medical Improvement and to a medical class at the hospital,
Speaker 1: and Dr Bigelow also made a life cast of Phineas's head,
Speaker 1: showing the outward physical damage that was still evidence even
Speaker 1: once the initial wounds had healed. He spent some time
Speaker 1: at Barnum's American Museum in New York City and gave
Speaker 1: a couple of lectures and exhibitions about his accident in
Speaker 1: the Northeast sometime in the early eighteen fifties. And this
Speaker 1: seems to be sort of the the total of his
Speaker 1: public display. Like sometimes people say that he traveled around
Speaker 1: with a freak show and he became this freak show
Speaker 1: performer um, and that seems to be an exaggeration of
Speaker 1: what was more a couple of exhibitions or lectures that
Speaker 1: he was in. And in early eighteen fifty one he
Speaker 1: was hired by Jonathan Courier to work at a Livery
Speaker 1: stable in New Hampshire, and he worked there for about
Speaker 1: a year and a half. Then in August of eighteen
Speaker 1: fifty two, a man who was starting a new carriage
Speaker 1: company hired him to come work with him in Chili.
Speaker 1: Phineas worked in a stable and drove a stagecoach in
Speaker 1: Chili for about seven years. And we've talked about how
Speaker 1: demanding the job of a stage coach driver is in
Speaker 1: our recent episode about Charlie Parkhurst. So it seems as though,
Speaker 1: contrary to some of the popular writing about him, he
Speaker 1: did recover some of his mental abilities, or at least
Speaker 1: adapt to life without them. Um it may even be
Speaker 1: that the really routine work of driving the same the
Speaker 1: same stagecoach route, day after day after day gradually helped
Speaker 1: his brain adapt, and eventually, as his health began to fail,
Speaker 1: he went out to San Francisco, where his family had
Speaker 1: moved in pursuit of the gold Rush. He was pretty
Speaker 1: sick when he got there, but he recovered somewhat and
Speaker 1: was able to work for a while on a farm
Speaker 1: in Santa Clara, But then he had a series of seizures.
Speaker 1: They got more and more serious, and he died in
Speaker 1: May of eighteen sixty He was buried on May twenty
Speaker 1: three of that year, and there was no top. There
Speaker 1: was no autopsy, but in eighteen sixty seven his body
Speaker 1: was exhumed and his skull and the tamping iron were
Speaker 1: sent to Dr Harlow, and Dr Harlow eventually sent those
Speaker 1: to the Warren Anatomical Museum at Harvard, which already had
Speaker 1: Dr Bigelow's life cast. So you can actually see all
Speaker 1: three of these things at the Warren Museum Exhibition gallery
Speaker 1: at the Countway Library of Medicine. Thanks to this skull
Speaker 1: and a lot of modern imaging work, today we have
Speaker 1: a much better idea of the exact extent of Phineas's injuries,
Speaker 1: especially where the rod went. Besides the obvious through his head,
Speaker 1: his skull was damaged in multiple places uh you would expect,
Speaker 1: under the cheekbone, at the back of the eye socket,
Speaker 1: and the top of his head. And so he lived
Speaker 1: for the rest of his life with parts of his
Speaker 1: skull missing entirely, including a pretty significant sized patch from
Speaker 1: the top of his head. A number of researchers have
Speaker 1: tried to tackle the question of exactly how the rod
Speaker 1: traveled through his head and brain, and exactly what parts
Speaker 1: of his brain were damaged, because some of the holes
Speaker 1: that were in his skull were smaller than the diameter
Speaker 1: of the rod, which, like the one under his cheekbone,
Speaker 1: was smaller than the rod was, and then the one
Speaker 1: at the top of his head was a lot bigger. UM.
Speaker 1: A lot of their findings didn't really agree with one
Speaker 1: another until we developed tools like CT scans to look
Speaker 1: at the skull itself UM and m R eyes of
Speaker 1: living people's brains to create kind of a model for
Speaker 1: what gauges might have looked like. In two thousand four,
Speaker 1: researchers use set scans of the skull to create a
Speaker 1: three D representation of Phineasa's skull to try to determine
Speaker 1: exactly where the damage occurred, and their conclusion factors in
Speaker 1: that some of the bone at the entry wound must
Speaker 1: have moved out of the way almost like a hinge,
Speaker 1: and then close back down and later healed over since
Speaker 1: the entry wound on the skull under the cheekbone is
Speaker 1: smaller than the rod itself. In a team of researchers
Speaker 1: led by John Darryl Van Horne published a paper called
Speaker 1: Mapping Connectivity Damage in the case of Phineas Gage. It
Speaker 1: used all kinds of medical imaging techniques to map out
Speaker 1: exactly which parts of the brain would have been damaged,
Speaker 1: and this is where they used m R eyes of
Speaker 1: other patients to to sort of work up a model.
Speaker 1: Their findings are in p l OS one, so you
Speaker 1: can read them online for free, and at this point
Speaker 1: most of the modern computational studies agree that the damage
Speaker 1: was really confined to the left frontal lobe. Phineas became
Speaker 1: really famous in the world of neuropsychology today. He's a
Speaker 1: case study in many many psychology and neuroscience textbooks in
Speaker 1: chapters about how an injury to the brain can change
Speaker 1: a person's personality. But a lot of the writing about
Speaker 1: him today really sort of retroactively give his story a
Speaker 1: lot of credit for everything from lobotomyes to how doctors
Speaker 1: diagnosed tumors and people's frontal lobes based on changes in
Speaker 1: their behavior. But a lot of this is really hindsight
Speaker 1: and sometimes it's uh kind of pulled out of thin air.
Speaker 1: There's a little bit of making things up going on.
Speaker 1: So his accident, the fact that he survived it, and
Speaker 1: the fact that he basically recovered and lived for more
Speaker 1: than eleven more years. All of that definitely contributed to
Speaker 1: the fields of neurosurgery and neuropsychology, and and they were
Speaker 1: on their own pretty incredible. He really was long dead
Speaker 1: by the time surgery and sterilization techniques progressed to the
Speaker 1: point that neurosurgery surgery was even a survivable event. And
Speaker 1: a lot of the writing about him also ascribes what
Speaker 1: we later learned about lobotomy and brain tumor patients to
Speaker 1: Phineas himself, sort of applying other people's behavior after the
Speaker 1: destruction of their frontal lobes to phineas his behavior when
Speaker 1: he lived. But these descriptions which we mentioned before that
Speaker 1: he became violent and shiftless and couldn't hold a job,
Speaker 1: they just don't match up with the descriptions of people
Speaker 1: that actually examined him and until that were around him.
Speaker 1: He kind of gets conflated with descriptions of other patients
Speaker 1: with completely different conditions that also involved their frontal lobe
Speaker 1: in some way. Yeah, their symptoms get attributed to his
Speaker 1: behavior or ascribed to his behavior when they weren't really
Speaker 1: going on. A lot of people also cite him as
Speaker 1: one of the patients who helped neurologists figure out that
Speaker 1: different parts of our brains do different jobs, and this
Speaker 1: definitely was not the case at the time. UM. Doctors
Speaker 1: really knew very little about the brain, and there were
Speaker 1: two contradictory and competing theories. One was that the brain
Speaker 1: was basically this undifferentiated thing with all of the parts
Speaker 1: of the brain able to handle any task, and the other,
Speaker 1: which included the phrenologists that we've talked about before, believe
Speaker 1: that different locations in the brain had different functions. Both
Speaker 1: of these groups claimed that Gauge was supporting their theory.
Speaker 1: The people who thought that the brain could do anything
Speaker 1: from any part, we're like, well, he survived, clearly all
Speaker 1: the other parts of the brain made up for it. UM.
Speaker 1: And the people who thought that the different parts of
Speaker 1: the brain had different functions were like, well, his behavior changed,
Speaker 1: so clearly he supports our theory. UM. So this did
Speaker 1: add to the whole field and the whole world of
Speaker 1: things that we know about the brain. But there are
Speaker 1: other doctors and other patients who actually had a much
Speaker 1: bigger impact on this idea that the different parts of
Speaker 1: the brains do different things. In particular, Dr Kyl Wernicky
Speaker 1: and Dr Paul Broca, who each worked with patients who
Speaker 1: have had damage to specific areas that affected their ability
Speaker 1: to use language. So Wernicky and broke Out have parts
Speaker 1: of the brain named after them based on their research.
Speaker 1: Um without those kind of developments, we we could not
Speaker 1: have jumped to the idea that different parts of the
Speaker 1: brain did different things just based on anas Gauges case right,
Speaker 1: And we do have a couple of pictures of Phineas Gauge.
Speaker 1: Vintage photo collectors Jack and Beverly Wilgas acquired one somewhere
Speaker 1: along the line. Yeah, I don't really remember where. They
Speaker 1: put it on Flicker in two thousand seven, and eventually
Speaker 1: Internet chatter identified it as likely be engaged, and this
Speaker 1: was eventually confirmed by matching the photo to the life
Speaker 1: cast that set the museum and Gauge. His family released
Speaker 1: another picture in the life mask of Phineas's head and
Speaker 1: his skull and the tamping iron are all at Warren
Speaker 1: Anatomical Museum at Harvard Medical School. The rod has this inscription,
Speaker 1: this is the bar that was shot through the head
Speaker 1: of Mr Phineas P. Gauge at Cavendish, Vermont, September You
Speaker 1: fully recovered from the injury and deposited this bar in
Speaker 1: the museum at the Medical College of Harvard University. UH.
Speaker 1: And then there is a name and some other dating.
Speaker 1: So what's funny. There's a couple of funny things about this.
Speaker 1: One is that his name is spelled wrong, and the
Speaker 1: other is the the date is wrong and exactly how
Speaker 1: this all came to be as kind of lost to history.
Speaker 1: At some point he gave the rod to Harvard's Medical
Speaker 1: school museum, and then he asked for it back in
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty four, but the inscription is dated eighteen fifty
Speaker 1: so this is all sort of in addition to being
Speaker 1: kind of weird and misspelled. It calls into question this
Speaker 1: uh frequent thing that you may hear about Phineas, which
Speaker 1: is that he carried the rod around with him forever
Speaker 1: after the accident. Clearly he did not do that, UM.
Speaker 1: But clearly he also did want it because he asked
Speaker 1: for it back from Harvard, so that's a little unclear
Speaker 1: at this point. There's also a commemorative plaque in the
Speaker 1: ca in Cavendish, Vermont, UH and it was unveiled on
Speaker 1: September thirteenth, which was the fiftieth anniversary of Phineas's accident.
Speaker 1: There's also a book called An Odd Kind of Fame,
Speaker 1: Stories of Phineas Gage by Malcolm McMillan. It's not the
Speaker 1: only book about him, but it came out in in
Speaker 1: the r two thousand and it gives a really thorough
Speaker 1: history of Phineas and accident um and it debunks a
Speaker 1: lot of the popular perception of him and his life
Speaker 1: and how he behaved afterward. So it is I think
Speaker 1: the most thorough work on him that you can get
Speaker 1: in one place today. Yeah, which is good because there's
Speaker 1: a lot of mythology that's growing and I understand how
Speaker 1: that happens. It's such a bizarre phenomenal thing. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: easy to then accept some other pretty incredible details about
Speaker 1: the story, right well, and it's it's one of those
Speaker 1: stories that now it's it's almost as interesting for how
Speaker 1: it became this sort of neuroscience juggernaut as for the
Speaker 1: actual accident that happened. So yes, fascinating And he escage
Speaker 1: hundred and sixty five years ago a tamping rod had
Speaker 1: a little accident through his entire skull. Do you also
Speaker 1: have listener mail for our enjoyment? I do this is
Speaker 1: from Elizabeth, and Elizabeth says, I was so excited for
Speaker 1: your Charlie Park first podcast. I've spent many years working
Speaker 1: in the mountains of Santa Cruz practicing forestry and timber harvesting.
Speaker 1: I thought I would give you some background on the
Speaker 1: area to add some flavor to your image of Charlie.
Speaker 1: The Santa Cruz Mountains in the eighteen hundreds were absolutely formidable.
Speaker 1: In California, we have mountains that to Georgia style mountains
Speaker 1: for breakfast. The Santa Cruz Mountains are really steep. There's
Speaker 1: random cracks in the earth from earthquakes, cliffs, and any
Speaker 1: water course essentially has a steep inner gorge surrounding it.
Speaker 1: In the winter, we get rained from about November to
Speaker 1: April and it just rained the whole time. Even in
Speaker 1: the modern era, roads are slick, mudflides are a huge problem,
Speaker 1: rivers become torrents, and remote mountains homes routinely get cut
Speaker 1: off from civilization. Add to all that, in the eighteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: mountain lions and bears routinely roamed the area. Santa Cruz
Speaker 1: has always been slightly off from the larger San Francisco
Speaker 1: Bay to the north, and the moderate. The Montery area
Speaker 1: was difficult to get to as well because it s
Speaker 1: stu aries. The current main road over the hill is
Speaker 1: referred to as Killer seventeen because it is incredibly windy, steep, narrow,
Speaker 1: and for a long time had no median divider. Back
Speaker 1: in the olden days, whips and stagecoach companies used to
Speaker 1: find the roads and passages quote over the hill and
Speaker 1: try to outdo each other transporting people over the rough terrain.
Speaker 1: One of the places I worked as a road prism
Speaker 1: that was one of these stagecoach roads and is still
Speaker 1: a visible road cut through the woods, slide slopes of
Speaker 1: and then randomly nice flat road. You can still drive
Speaker 1: small truck on. One thing you forgot to mention in
Speaker 1: the podcast, maybe because you were not aware that is
Speaker 1: the reason. In fact, there was another Mountain Charlie in
Speaker 1: the area that was maybe more famous in the Santa
Speaker 1: Cruz area. There's even a Mount Charlie road named after him.
Speaker 1: He was another grizzled tough whip who lost an eye
Speaker 1: when it was swiped in a fight with a fare
Speaker 1: Although he couldn't drive teams anywhere, he set up a
Speaker 1: toll on one of his passages over the hill. Uh,
Speaker 1: and then she sends a link to that mountain, Charlie.
Speaker 1: So number one, thank you, Elizabeth. Um. Well, I have
Speaker 1: not been to the Santa Cruz Mountains in particular, but
Speaker 1: I have driven up to Lake Arrowhead in California a
Speaker 1: couple of times for Maximum con um and it is
Speaker 1: definitely a whole different experience from the Appalachian Mountains, which
Speaker 1: I am much more used to. And what's deceptive is
Speaker 1: that it starts out feeling a whole lot like I've
Speaker 1: already going up to Asheville, except it it keeps going,
Speaker 1: and it goes and goes and goes some more, and
Speaker 1: then it keeps going and then you look down and
Speaker 1: there's clouds under you, and it's a little alarming and weird. Um.
Speaker 1: I have never driven it. I think I have driven.
Speaker 1: I've been in a vehicle with my parents driving through it.
Speaker 1: I remember being rather terrified. Yeah, I'm a little bit
Speaker 1: of a nervous Nellie in the car sometimes. Well. And
Speaker 1: the you know, if if any of you have ever
Speaker 1: heard of maximun con it's a the Maximum Fund podcast network,
Speaker 1: I thing that they have every year. Um. And there
Speaker 1: was a lot of this shin on the forums about, Hey,
Speaker 1: I hear this road is really terrifying to drive on.
Speaker 1: And uh, you know, I said, I used to drive
Speaker 1: to Asheville and back. Will I be okay? And people like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: sure you'll be fine, and they were right. I mean,
Speaker 1: I was pretty much fine, but there was this moment
Speaker 1: when I sort of saw down how extremely high up
Speaker 1: I was. For a brief second, you were not fine. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then last the last time that I went, I
Speaker 1: made a wrong turn and wound up just sort of
Speaker 1: on this road that was running along the ridge in
Speaker 1: the mountains there for a really long time. And that
Speaker 1: was that was definitely a little alarming. So yes, thank
Speaker 1: you Elizabeth for writing to us. We definitely did not
Speaker 1: hear about the other mountains Charley um in our research,
Speaker 1: and it's so many great details about the area. It
Speaker 1: really does help contextualize at all. And yeah, we pretty
Speaker 1: much said this was terrifying, but we didn't know a
Speaker 1: lot of terrifying tail I'm extra terrified. I while I
Speaker 1: would like to be a lighthousekeeper, I do not want
Speaker 1: to be a stage coach driver in the Santa Cruz Mountain. Okay,
Speaker 1: if you would like to write to us about stage
Speaker 1: coaches or crazy industrial accidents, maybe not that, or anything
Speaker 1: else you can. We are at uh History podcast at
Speaker 1: discovery dot com. We're also on Facebook at facebook dot
Speaker 1: com slash history class stuff, and on Twitter at mist
Speaker 1: in History. You can find our tumbler at Miston History
Speaker 1: dot tumbler dot com, and we've been pinning things about
Speaker 1: our episodes and other historical stuff on Pinterest. If you
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