Scientists show Phineas Gage's face moments after the accident (7 photos + 1 video)

On September 13, 1848, Phineas Gage's crew was busy blasting a railroad through the rocks of Vermont. During the explosion, a crowbar with a diameter of 3.2 cm entered the left side of the man's face, knocked out his eye, pierced his brain and flew out. Surprisingly, the American survived. The accident that revolutionized the understanding of the brain has been reconstructed using Gage's skull.





Much of Gage's left frontal lobe was destroyed, but he lived for another 12 years.

After 175 years, doctors decided to look at what the patient's face looked like at the time of the accident, for this they used forensic reconstruction.



Cicero Moraes, author of the study, explains: "In Gage's case, we already had at least two photographs of him, so the most interesting thing about this project was reconstructing the dynamics of the passage of the crowbar through the head. I wanted to understand what happened at that moment."



"I simulated the passage of a crowbar in the places where the damage was indicated, fitting fragments of the skull and thus obtaining the basic dynamics of the incident. The CT scan of the brain was adjusted so that it fit exactly into Gage's skull."



“All this together allowed us to animate the scene, see where the piece of steel passes and what part of the brain it hits. This way, we can create visual educational material to better understand the seriousness of the incident,” concluded Moraes.



During the incident, 25-year-old Gage was placing another charge into a cavity between the stones, took a crowbar and began to seal the plug over the gunpowder with it. The next blow struck a spark and an explosion occurred. The crowbar hit the worker's head and flew almost 25 meters.



A couple of months after the tragedy, the wound healed. Phineas' personality change after the accident sparked debate among doctors.

Some said it supported the idea that different parts of the brain have different functions, others said it showed how one part of the brain can replace another if it is lost.



For Moraes, a Brazilian graphics expert, Gage's reconstruction was especially important for personal reasons.

As a child, he watched his father shoot himself, and in 2011, during an armed robbery, Cicero was shot in the head and suffered a broken rib.

"When I was working on Gage, I saw the story of a man who did not allow a terrible tragedy to break him. He is an example of how life can be cruel to us, but we can fight and win, even when the odds are minimal. This incident made me think how much I have overcome."