1. Lucky or unlucky?
By: Abigail Ormond, Hannah Herring, Whitlee Letchworth, and Conner Craft

2. Phineas Gage
Phineas Gage was a railroad foreman in Cavendish, Vermont.
He had hard earned respect from his peers.
Phineas was a hard worker, loyal friend, and a loving family member before the accident.
He was 25 years old at the time of his accident.

3. The Accident
Phineas Gage was struck by a tamping iron on September 13, The accident happened when he was blasting a railroad through granite.
Witnesses remember seeing him standing over the blast hole. Others say he was sitting on a ledge above the hole, holding the iron between his knees.
All the witnesses agree that Phineas turned his head to glance over his right shoulder.
His tamping iron sparked against the rock and the powder exploded.

4. The tamping iron entered under his left cheek bone, passed behind his left eye, through the front of his brain, and out the middle of his forehead.
Phineas survived, but only for eleven more years. Was he lucky or unlucky?

5. Why was Phineas Lucky?
One minute after Phineas’s accident, he was able to speak.
Phineas Gage was luckily close to a doctor that arrived quickly to his rescue.
He survived eleven years with a large piece of his cortex destroyed.
Gage’s brain was pierced, but not damaged in places of vital functions.

6. Physically, Gage had a full recovery.
He still had the ability to keep his balance, focus, and remember old and new events.
He was able to be in Broadway shows and was able to drive a six-horse stagecoach.
He was able to spend more time with his family.

7. Why was he unlucky? Mentally, Phineas Gage never recovered.
His family said he was nothing like the old Phineas.
He lost his job and respect from a lot of his friends and family.
Pieces of his brain were taken away.
He lost the part of his brain that helped him have social skills.
He became an alcoholic.

8. People stared at him in public and judged him without knowing his story.
During the remaining years of his life, he experienced epileptic seizures.
Although he survived the accident, it was still the cause of his death eleven years later.

9. The Science of the Accident
During the time of Gage’s accident, there was no knowledge of the inside of the brain.
Scientists thought that
the brain was divided up
into organs and each had
a different function.

10. Scientists were able to use Phineas Gage’s brain to learn new things about the brain.
While recovering, Gage’s brain was completely exposed to bacteria. This caused infection and it is likely that it made his injury worse.
The life mask of Phineas’s brain helped scientists discover how bacteria was harmful.

11. Today Today, Phineas is still famous for his survival of the accident.
His skull rode in a limousine to Cavendish for a festival in his honor.
There is a rock monument in Cavendish in memory of Phineas.

12. His skull and tamping iron were previously located at the Harvard Medical School.
These objects now stay
in the Warren Museum
Exhibition Gallery at the
Conway Library of Medicine.
This library is also located in
Boston, Massachusetts.

13. What Do You Think??
Lucky or Unlucky?

14. Sources Phineas Gage: A Gruesome but True Story About Brain Science
Whitlee Letchworth
Abigail Ormond
Hannah Herring
Conner Craft
Google Images