Phineas Gage – America’s First Headbanger?

Phineas Gage – Liam Sweeny.

Did you ever hear the story of Phineas Gage? It’s a good story, especially with Halloween coming ‘round the bend. Phineas Gage even sounds like a ghost name, but the is (was) not a ghost. Should he have been? Probably, but this is a miraculous tale of survival.

It’s 1848. The ghosts haunting houses back then were 16^th Century ghosts. But this happened not in a house, but on a railroad in construction. I’m no expert of railway construction, but apparently, there was gunpowder involved.

Maybe you know where this is going.

Good Phineas, fair Phineas, dutiful Phineas had the laborious task of tamping down the gunpowder to get it ready to do what it did, and for that, he had a long, slim iron tamper. He turned his head to talk to a coworker, a rock ignited the gunpowder, and that long, slim, iron temper took a very fast journey through Gage’s cranium, going right through his brain.

You don’t survive this. I mean, c’mon, zombies don’t survive a shot to the head. The doctor at the time, in true sanitary practice, shoved his fingers through the in- and out-holes of Gage’s skull, and his fingers touched. The infection from just that could’ve killed him, but with a deft application of silver nitrate, Phineas Gage somehow survived.

And that’s part of the story. That’s the Ripley’s part. The part that could make a modern horror show it that he changed. Fitful, spewing out profanities, less able to control his impulses, afraid of pitchforks and fire and angry villagers (shit, wrong story), he changed. And the freakier part is that he only changed for about two or three years. After that, fine. Well, he died eleven years later from a seizure, but eight-to-nine solid years.

Phineas Gage was a trained and lucky professional. Do not try this at home. And yes, 1848 was pretty wild.

More by Liam Sweeny.