Phineas’ Life Goes On

1851-Phineas comes home and works around town at a stable.

Early 1852- Phineas meet a man who said he wants to have a stagecoach line in Chile, so spontaneously Phineas just says goodbye to New England and began a life in Chile as a stagecoach driver.

1859- Phineas goes to see family in San Francisco. He gets a plowing job for a farmer. Soon after he comes to San Fran, he experiences many seizures, (known as epileptic seizures.) Doctors tried to “bleed” Phineas or reduce his blood pressure by taking blood, to help the pressure on his brain, but this does not help the seizures. It is unknown exactly why he experiences them, maybe it’s from his accident before, maybe he hit his head again, or maybe he had an infection, it is unclear why, but them constantly occurring wears Phineas down and he passes away on May 21, 1860.

1862-Paul Broca a French surgeon from Paris discovers something new about the brain. He examines brains of people who experienced strokes and lost speaking ability. He then became aware of an injury in a certain spot on the brain located by the left front lobe. This is known as the “Broca area” found just above your left ear hole, two inches in front. Trauma to this area may cause you to not be able to speak ever again. Not long after, a man named Carl Wernickle who was German discovers another area of the brain that is in charge of interpreting speech. This area is found by the left temporal lobe and if damage it could hurt someone’s competency of apprehending speech. As you can see brain science slowly begins to develop and become clearer.