Phineas Gage was a young supervisor aged 25 years, of a railroad construction company in Burland and Rutland that were based in Vermont. His primary responsibility was to ensure that he leads his gang of men in the activity of clearing the way for the continued stretch of a railway by blowing off the stones. On that fateful day, 13 September 1848 as he prepared a powder charge used in blasting rocks, he happened to use the blunt side of the sharp pointed crucial rod into a hole, when things went haywire after a resultant explosion. The 5.9 kg, 1.05 m and 44.45 mm diameter iron rod, forcefully pierced Gage’s head from beneath his left cheek through the skull and part of the brain sending to the ground unconscious (Kotowicz, 2007).
The impact caused by the rod on Gage’s body was devastating since part of his skull, one of his eyes and the frontal part of the brain were ruined. He immediately lost consciousness, reminiscent of a technical knockout in a game of boxing since after a short duration, he recovered his lost consciousness. He was then taken to John Harlow, who was a doctor, who treated his injury and monitored his recovery.
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The injury took a toll on Gage’s behavior because there were startling changes that were registered in his personality and mood. Gage became anti-social, extravagant, and ill-mannered with an excellent taste for lies and profanity, and could no longer be eventful and organized as he used to be before the accident occurred to him (Kotowicz, 2007). Through what his friends said, he had completely changed from the original Gage before the accident. According to Kotowicz (2007), the accident damaged both sides of the ventromedial region which on the frontal lobes. It was concluded that the part responsible for motor and speech function of the frontal lobes was not tampered with since Gage could talk and walk. The only option left was to reason that his behavior change could have been affected by the lesion as had been observed in other patients who had difficulty in the decision-making regarding rational choices and motion control.
After a full recovery, Gage faces his ultimate fate when his gang members reject him since he could not be trusted in his state as a liar and a person full of profanity. Being in this sorrowful state, he becomes desperate and believably so, a nuisance to his 70-year-old mother, and finally dies (Kotowicz, 2007). The last time he saw the light of day was in 1861 as a broke and epileptic man, whose autopsy was not done. This was an incredibly long time after that horrible accident.
Gage’s case is relevant to psychology because of its close association with the emotional and mental functions that he lost after the accident. As explained by his doctor, “The equilibrium between his intellectual faculties and animal propensities seems to have been destroyed” is a clear indication that there is lot more that could be learned from this case in the medical context. Most doctors in the field of neurology use the case of Phineas Gage as a classical point of reference when analyzing mental cases in their patients to determine the critical cause and effect of the conditions that their patients are in, during their formal evaluation. This for a fact is based on the discovery by his doctor that he had lost vital emotional and mental function after the accident. According to one of Gage’s doctors, Antonio Damasio, Gage’s case represents the genesis in the study of behavior in the biological context, hence making it instrumental in medical and psychological sciences too.
Reference
Kotowicz, Z. (2007). The strange case of Phineas Gage. History of the human sciences , 20 (1), 115-131.
