Phineas Gage

This railway construction foreman unwittingly contributed to our understanding of the brain when an explosion sent a tamping iron through the left frontal lobe of his brain during work on the Rutland and Burlington Railroad near Cavendish, Vermont on September 13, 1848. Edward Williams, MD and John Martyn Harlow, MD attended to his injury. He survived with personality changes now known to be characteristic of damage to the frontal lobes.