It seems that a daguerreotype of Phineas Gage has been found. You’ll remember Gage from your first-year psych class, as the railroad worker who had an unfortunate encounter with an iron bar.
Gage was working on blasting that day in 1848. When you blast holes in rock, you first drill a hole in the rock, insert some gunpowder plus some sand, then insert your tamping rod and tamp it all down. But on this particular day, Gage forgot the sand. When he tamped directly on the dynamite, the resulting explosion blasted the iron bar right through his cranium. The bar landed with a clang about 30 meters behind him.
Incredibly, Gage survived, but some reports note that Gage’s personality changed from amiable to quarrelsome. This fact caused researchers to focus on the brain as the source of behaviour, and not some metaphysical spirit entity. If the brain gets damaged, the personality gets damaged.
I like the photo of Gage. He looks confident, and every bit the gentleman. The closed left eye shows he’s taken some knocks, but still he holds the token of his fame and near-destruction in his hands.
30 July 2009 at 3:13 pm
This has always scared me far more than death. The fact that a little bump on the head can change me into an entirely different person. And since that is true, am I the "real" me before or after the bump. And if there were a God what me is going to be judged?
30 July 2009 at 4:56 pm
The Gage daguerreotype was identified because someone “just happened to remember” something. Malcolm Macmillan and I, who have been researching Gage for years, hope lighting will strike again. Without your knowing, you may already have important information on Phineas, or if you are located in any of the places mentioned below, you could help look for information. And it’s important, because a better understanding of Gage could improve treatments for persons with head injuries today.
Below is a summary of answers we are looking for. Many relate not to Gage himself, but rather people he met or places he’d been. Information might be in letters and diaries; medical and business records; town, police and court files; local newspapers; or in the archives of churches, hospitals and literary, professional, historical and genealogical societies. We especially hope organizations will search their one-of-a-kind materials not published in book form. FOR MORE SPECIFIC QUESTIONS, and why answers might help us better understand Phineas, please visit http://www.deakin.edu.au/hmnbs/psychology/gagepage/PgQuestn.php .
IN CHILE (1852-60): We want to know about Drs. William and Henry Trevitt, Masonic lodges, Methodist churches, and English-language newspapers, schools and businesses. Do you know anyone who can help with such things?
IN NEW ENGLAND (1848-54): Can you find newspaper or diary accounts of Phineas’ accident, of his travels exhibiting himself and his “iron,” or of his reported preaching at Methodist revivals in Sterling, Mass.? In Concord, NH records of the Abbot-Downing coachworks could identify “three enterprising New Englanders” who may have set up the coach line for which Phineas drove in Chile; in Hanover you might discover Phineas’ duties at Currier’s Inn, or a Dartmouth professor who met him; and somewhere in Wilton may be the papers of Henry Trevitt.
IN CALIFORNIA (1860- ): Where is the missing undertaker’s ledger showing where Gage died? What can you discover about Dr. William Jackson Wentworth (Alameda Co.) or the papers of Joseph Stalder (d.1931)? Are you descended from Phineas’s nieces/nephew Hannah, Delia, Mary, Alice, or Frank B. Shattuck? Can we learn more about Frank at the School for the Deaf?
IN OHIO (1860- ): Can you find anything about Henry Trevitt’s time at Starling Medical College in Columbus, Prof. J.W. Hamilton, or William Trevitt’s papers?
ANYWHERE: If you are related to the Cowdrey, Davis, Ames, or Kimball families, are you also related to Phineas’ doctor, John Martyn Harlow? Do you know of ship passenger lists (Boston, New York, Chile, Panama, S.F.) that might show Gage family movements? Do you have Gold Rush ancestors who stopped in Valparaiso, Chile? And of course, letters mentioning Gage could have gone anywhere.
There are more clues in Stillwater and Northfield, MN; Santa Clara, San Rafael, and S.F., CA; Cavendish, Castleton, Woodstock, and Burlington, VT; Lebanon, Enfield and Wilton, NH; Albany, NY, Buda, IL, the National Library of Medicine, and other places. At http://www.deakin.edu.au/hmnbs/psychology/gagepage/PgQuestn.php are details on how you can help by following such clues. Your help or inquiries to malcolm.macmillan@unimelb.edu.au will be very much appreciated. (Please use email instead of posting a reply here.)
We would be pleased to assist teachers (in New England, S.F., even Chile?) in creating a class project involving students’ search for family papers or local lore about Gage.