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Story of Phineas Gage - HISTORIC PHOTOGRAPHY - Estimated Date 1855

A daguerreotype image believed to be of railway worker Phineas Gage holding a tamping iron that went through his head during an explosion on a worksite in 1848. Phineas P. Gage (July 9?, 1823 – May 21, 1860)was a railroad construction foreman now remembered for his incredible survival of an accident in which a large iron rod was driven completely through his head, destroying one or both of his brain’s frontal lobes, and for that injury’s reported effects on his personality and behavior—effects so profound that friends saw him as “no longer Gage.” Gage recovered from the accident and retained full possession of his reason, but his wife and other people close to him soon began to notice dramatic changes in his personality. Phineas Gage’s brain was not subjected to any medical examination at that time, but seven years later his body was exhumed so his skull could be studied. Today Gage’s skull is on permanent display at Harvard’s Countway Library of Medicine.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2009/07/22/science/wilgus_gage_hs.jpg

Self-portrait as phrenology illustration (via obscure allusion)