Vermont railroad worker Phineas Gage improbably survives…
September 1848 CE
Long known as the "American Crowbar Case"— Phineas Gage will influence nineteenth-century discussion about the mind and brain, particularly debate on cerebral localization, and is perhaps the first case to suggest the brain's role in determining personality, and that damage to specific parts of the brain might induce specific personality changes.
A report of Gage's physical and mental condition shortly before his death, twelve years after the accident, implies that his most serious mental changes were temporary, so that in later life he was far more functional, and socially far better adapted, than in the years immediately following his accident.
A social recovery hypothesis suggests that Gage's work as a stagecoach driver in Chile fostered this recovery by providing daily structure which allowed him to regain lost social and personal skills.
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Northern North America
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