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October 16, 2005
Gage and his behavior changes
I found some very interesting information on Phineas Gage that adds new light to our textbook and conversation. The info is from The Phineas Gage Information Page hosted by the Faculty of Health and Behavioural Sciences, Deakin University Australia, http://www.deakin.edu.au/hbs/GAGEPAGE/Pgstory.htm
The article points out that with the exception of “a very small stock additional facts about Gage” almost everything we know about him was recorded by Dr. John Martyn Harlow, who treated Gage after the accident near Cavendish, Vermont on 13 September 1848 and who examined the skull and tamping iron after exhumation in 1867. He wrote a report of his findings that he delivered to the Massachusetts Medical Society in 1868 and in 1869 he published a pamphlet version of his address; unfortunately neither are held in many of the world’s libraries and thus “most of the accounts of Gage’s life after 1848 are strange mixtures of slight fact, considerable fancy, and downright fabrication.”
The article continues: “Harlow says, for example, that Phineas exhibited himself in the larger New England towns and was with Barnum’s in New York for a time. These remarks are frequently elaborated into a Gage who drifts around aimlessly and is not interested in working or, if interested, is incapable of holding a job. During the same period, Phineas is often pictured as exhibiting himself, usually as a freak, in circuses or fairgrounds around the country. Part of this fancy comes from Barnum now most often being remembered as the proprietor of a circus rather than the owner of the New York Museum to which Harlow unmistakably refers. Similarly, these stories turn Gage into a fairground freak because it is in such places that freaks are or were once seen.”
“In fact, from early in 1851 until just before he died nine years later, Gage seems to have worked at the one occupation, although in two places: in Currier’s livery stable and coach business for 1 [and a half years], and in Chile in a similar capacity for nearly seven more. There he clearly drove coaches, probably stage coaches. We know he was barely well enough to do a full day’s work on his parent’s farm until June of 1849, just well enough to travel to Boston in November of that year, and was still described in 1850 as failing in bodily powers. The maximum time he could have travelled around New England or been with Barnum’s Museum would seem to have been about a year. We know nothing about the quality of his work for Currier or when he was in Chile, or to what extent he was able to support himself.”
“Similarly, Gage’s mother told Harlow that he used to make up stories of his adventures to entertain his small nephews and nieces. This fact, together with the attribution to him of behaviours actually shown by some of the 1930’s radical resection patients, seems to be the basis for transforming Gage into an untruthful, short-tempered, psychopathic, braggart. What was written about some of the lobotomised patients is undeniably the source of the descriptions of Gage as careless or unreliable and slovenly in his personal habits, or as having less sexual drive but fewer inhibitions in talking about sex. Harlow mentions neither Gage’s sexual behaviour nor his drinking; nor is any documentation provided by any of those who have written on the matters. The prize for these kinds of fabrications must surely be shared between those accounts that endow him with sexual activity and those that turn him into a drunkard who dies in careless dissipation.”
“Now, what Harlow says may not be completely accurate, and it is clearly influenced by his medical and phrenological ideas, but it is virtually all that we have. The story Harlow tells is tragic enough. It does not need the modern undocumented and contradictory fabrications.”
~ Nanette
Posted by lcissavides at October 16, 2005 02:35 PM