Phineas Gage's Iron Rod Accident

Date: September 13, 1848 • Location: Washington, United States

An explosion drove an iron rod through the head of railroad foreman Phineas Gage; his survival and recovery influenced 19th-century discussion of psychology and neuroscience.

Phineas P. Gage (1823–1860) was an American railroad construction foreman remembered for his improbable[B1] survival of an accident in which a large iron rod was driven completely through his head, destroying much of his brain's left frontal lobe, and for that injury's reported effects on his personality and behavior over the remaining 12 years of his life‍—‌effects sufficiently profound that friends saw him as "no longer Gage".