“One of the great (and, it must be said, most written about) events in early neuroscience occurred in 1848 in rural Vermont when a young railroad builder named Phineas Gage was packing dynamite into a rock and it exploded prematurely, shooting a two-foot tamping rod through his left cheek and out the top of his head before it clattered back to Earth about fifty feet away. The rod removed a perfect core of brain about an inch in diameter.Miraculously, Gage survived and appears not even to have lost consciousness, though he did lose his left eye and his personality was forever transformed. Previously happy-go-lucky and popular, he was now moody, argumentative, and given to profane outbursts. He was just “no longer Gage,” as one old friend reported sadly. As often happens to people with frontal lobe damage, he had no insight into his condition and didn’t understand that he had changed. Unable to settle, he drifted from New England to South America and on to San Francisco, where he died aged thirty-six after falling prey to seizures. Gage’s misfortune was the first proof that physical damage to the brain could transform personality, Bryson, Bill. The Body (pp. 64-65). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. Bryson, Bill. The Body (p. 64). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. ”