I was listening to the TeamCoco podcast “Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend” a while back. Conan was discussing this rather curious and unfortunate accident that happened to a railroad demolition Forman in the 1800’s with his guest that day, Bill Hader.

This injury, the topic of their conversation, happened to a young man who dealt with explosives before nitroglycerin and dynamite had become a staple of demolition work. Dynamite was patented in 1867 and this accident occurred nearly twenty years before Nobel introduced such a device.

For anyone who knows me, the quickest way to get my head cupped in my hands, is to tell me a good story, and this one—it’s a doozy…

This work related accident happened on September 13th, 1848. It involves a young man accidentally shooting himself in the head. For all intent and purposes, this was not a trivial injury that occurred. Phineas shot a tamping rod through his cheek and it exited the top of his skull. This rod was made of iron, one meter long, and quite robust in diameter (1.25 inches). It is with absolute astonishment that he not only survived the injury (for an additional 12 years), but within minutes of the accident, was once again standing by his own accord and was cognitive.

By some reports, he insisted on continuing to work as well, but was ultimately sent home due to the overwhelmingly obvious severity of his injury. If I were to provide any more detail, it would only become… well, yucky.

What can be said, to this day: his injury is taught to students in the medical field. Gage is a fixture in the curricula of neurology, psychology, and neuroscience, one of "the great medical curiosities of all time" and "a living part of the medical folklore”.

SOCIAL MEDIA LINKS

TOUR DATES