the greater part of this continent, I am able to present to you indubitable evidence that my report of the case, in the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, was no fiction. You will find the report in Vol. 39, No. 20, page 389, of the Journal; also a subsequent report, with comments, by Prof. Henry J. Bigelow, in the American Journal of the Medical Sciences for July, 1850.[1]
The accident occurred in Cavendish, Vt., on the line of the Rutland & Burlington Railroad, at that time being built, on the 13th of September, 1848, and was occasioned by the premature explosion of a blast, when this iron, known to blasters as a tamping iron, and which I now show you, was shot through the face and head.
The subject of it was Phin. P. Gage, a perfectly healthy, strong and active young man, twenty-five years of age, nervobilious temperament, five feet six inches in height, average weight one hundred and fifty pounds, possessing an iron will as well as an iron frame; muscular system unusually well developed–having had scarcely a day’s illness from his childhood to the date of this injury. Gage was foreman of a gang of men employed in excavating rock, for the road way. The circumstances were briefly as follows:–
He was engaged in charging a hole drilled in the rock for the purpose of blasting, sitting at the time upon a shelf of rock above the hole. His men were engaged in the pit,
- ↑ Soon after the publication of this case in the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, in November, 1848, I received a letter from Henry J. Bigelow, Professor of Surgery in the Medical Department of Harvard University, requesting me to send Gage to Boston, generously proposing to defray his expenses and compensate him for loss of time. Gage being quite well, and the hole in the top of his head entirely closed, accepted this proposition, and remained in Boston, under the observation of Prof. Bigelow, eight or nine weeks, where he was examined by many medical men, Prof. Bigelow being thoroughly convinced, at a time when the accident had very few believers either in the medical profession or out of it, that the lesion was as represented–that the iron had traversed the cranium and brain as stated. With my concurrence he reported the case, with illustrations, in the American Journal of the Medical Sciences for July, 1850.
