The question lucky
or unlucky is always asked when talking about Phineas Gage. On September 13,
1848 Phineas Gage’s life was turned upside down from that day on, and it will
never be the same. Phineas was only 26 years old and worked as a railroad
constructor in Cavendish, Vermont and at the time, this job was very strenuous
and hardworking. There weren’t any machines to help out the human hands.
Phineas had a special talent at the construction sites, he blasted! His job was
to blast rock that was in the path of work. In order to do this, Phineas needed
a tool called the “tamping iron.” This was used to position explosives. It was designed
to have one end for pressing down on the powder and the other end was very
sharp to set the fuse through the gun powder.
Gunpowder is very sensitive when it is dry, it
could go of at any moment, and it did! Phineas was getting set up as usual but the
fuse is left exposed by accident and Phineas had got distracted and the fuse
was set off! The tamping iron soars through the air and the Phineas fly’s
backwards. The rod had passed right below his left cheek bone, going behind his
left eye then in front of his brain. Surprisingly Phineas gets up and sits on a
cart to be taken to the doctors and the whole time Phineas talks to everyone
and is describing what just happened and why there was a hole in his head and
blood was gushing down his face.
Dear Shanna,
ReplyDeleteAfter you talked about your blog post in school, I had to come read it for myself. This is absolutely horrible! I would be hysterical if that happened to me! He must be one strong guy. Is he used to a lot of pain? Or did he not feel it or something? Because that just doesn't seem right. Oh, and everytime I read this I kept thinking of Phineas and Ferb...just thought I'd share(: Have a good day!
wow, thats intense. but it is pretty amazing that he got up !
ReplyDeleteThats really gruesome but really cool how he seemed to be unaffected. I look forward to reading about what happens next!
ReplyDeleteOh my word! I have a friend whose dad was chainsawing a tree and something happened and the chainsaw wound up slicing his head but he could not feel it. Maybe it was a similar thing that happened with Phineas? Also, I was watching Untold Stories of the ER and a man had a thick tree branch going through his head on both sides! It is so weird how all this happens! Phineas's incident was horrifying and I can't believe he was talking! The human body is a mystery to me!
ReplyDelete