The Legendary Impaled Skull of Phineas Gage

BOSTON — There it sat, in all its dreadful glory.

The skull, one of the most famous in the world, was there in the case — with two huge chunks of bone removed — sitting alongside a more than three-foot-long, iron rod.

Ah, yes. The legendary case holding the cranium of Phineas Gage.

There I stood alone on the fifth floor of Harvard Medical School’s Warren Anatomical Museum. Sure, I could hear voices of others behind thick wooden doors. But as for true company, the only human remains in sight were me, and the hollowed head of Mr. Gage himself. I tried to take myself back — imagining what it must have been like on Sept. 13, 1848.

On this day, Gage, a New Hampshire native, was blasting rock for the Rutland & Burlington Railroad in Vermont: boring a hole into the rock, filling it with blasting powder and adding a fuse. It was then covered with dirt or clay and pounded into the space with a tool called a tamping iron—a three-and-a-half-foot long iron rod.

As the story goes, Gage turned to say something to his fellow workers, which put his face in front of the blast hole. The tamping iron then sparked on the rock, causing it to explode.

And Gage’s life—and most importantly, his skull—would never be the same.

The 13-pound rod shot up into his face, point-first, entering at the left lower jaw and continuing through his cheek. It passed his left eye, shot the left side of his brain and exited the top of his head, passing through the frontal lobe.

It landed nearly 80 feet away.

Gage landed on his back, and according to some reports, went into convulsions. But after a few minutes, not only was he still alive, he sat up and began to speak. He even walked—with some assistance—back to a cart that took him to a local doctor who cleaned and treated his wounds.

In 1852, he was invited to Chile to do similar stable and coachwork. Here he stayed for seven years before falling ill and returning home. But this time, he never got better.

He died in 1860 at the age of 36—incredibly, almost 12 years after being impaled with the rod.

Sometime during his recovery, he donated the iron rod to the Harvard Medical School. After his death, his skull was donated, too. And there they were, right in front of me. Anyone can pay Phineas Gage’s skull and the impalement rod a visit—they’re housed in the Harvard museum, which is a part of the medical school.

And while Harvard Medical School is full of marvels and curious exhibits, nothing tops the man who took an iron spike through the head and lived to tell the tale.