In 1848 a railway construction worker named Phineas Gage suffered an  accident that made him a major curiosity of medicine and a significant  figure in psychology and neuroscience: an explosion caused a tamping  iron to be blown completely through his head, destroying the left  frontal lobe of his brain. Gage survived the accident and remained in  reasonable physical health for another eleven years. But his behavior  changed markedly after the injury, and his case is considered to be the  first to reveal the relation between the brain and complex personality  characteristics. Yet almost nothing is known about him, and most of what  is written is seriously in error.    In this book Malcolm Macmillan, a leading authority on Gage, covers all  aspects of this fascinating story. He describes Gage's family and  personal background, the context of his work and the accident, and  Gage's subsequent history. He analyzes contemporary medical and  newspaper reports of the accident and its consequences, and evaluates  the treatment Gage received from Dr. John Martyn Harlow. He also looks  at Harlow's own life and work. Macmillan examines Gage's place in the  history of how functions came to be localized in the brain. He explores  the many ways that Gage's tale has been represented and misrepresented  through the years in popular, fictional, and scientific works. One of  Macmillan's primary aims is to rescue the case from the predominantly  fantastic accounts so that its real contribution to modern neuroscience  can be understood. Partly for this reason, the appendices include  facsimiles of Harlow's 1848 and 1868 reports, the primary sources about  Gage, and previously unpublished CT scans of Gage's skull made in 1982.

An Odd Kind of Fame: Stories of Phineas Gage PDF

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