Background
Gage was the first of five children born to Jesse Eaton Gage and Hannah Trussell (Swetland) Gage of Grafton County, New Hampshire. … 展开

Harlow saw Gage's survival as demonstrating "the wonderful resources of the system in enduring the shock and in overcoming the effects of so frightful a lesion, and as a beautiful display of the recuperative powers of nature", and listed what he saw as the … 展开

Though Gage is considered the "index case for personality change due to frontal lobe damage", ​ ​ ​ ​ the uncertain extent of his brain damage​ and the … 展开

• Anatoli Bugorski – scientist whose head was struck by a particle-accelerator proton beam
• Eadweard Muybridge – another early case of head injury leading to mental changes
• Alexis St. … 展开

Gage may have been the first case to suggest the brain's role in determining personality and that damage to specific parts of the brain might induce specific personality changes, but … 展开

Skepticism
Barker notes that Harlow's orig­i­nal 1848 report of Gage's sur­viv­al and recov­ery "was widely dis­be­lieved, for obvious reasons"  and Harlow, recall­ing this early skep­ti­cism in his 1868 ret­ro­spec­tive, invoked the biblical story of 展开

Two daguerreotype portraits of Gage, identi­fied in 2009 and 2010, are the only like­nes­ses​ of him known other than a plaster head cast taken for … 展开