Harvard University is the pinnacle of social and academic success. Just the name, Harvard, brings to mind twenty year-old future business leaders and politicians gathering around in the library to discuss stock options and boating knots while they finish up their assignments for macro-economic courses. Exciting for some, but for most, as dull as it gets. Yet, after visiting the campus, I have come away with a very different perspective of Harvard. There’s a lot of strange and interesting stuff there—the famous Widener Library, named after a victim of the Titanic disaster, the comically ridiculous Lampoon Building, and a book bound in human flesh in the rare books library just to name a few. It makes sense that a university older than the United States –Harvard was established in 1636—to house a few oddities. Perhaps the most interesting one resides in a glass display case within Harvard’s Medical School Library, the skull of Phineas Gage.
What in the world is the skull of Phineas Gage, and why would anyone want to see it? Good question. That’s just the question that led me to take the train from Harvard’s central campus to the university medical school on the other side of the city. Yet, before seeing the skull, I needed to find out what made it so unique.
Phineas Gage was just your average railroad worker in 19th century America. He began working as a railroad construction foreman in the mid-1840s. His primary job was to handle explosives when the crew needed to
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Today, Gage’s story is a fixture for any student of psychology or neurology. After his death in 1860, Gage’s skull and the iron rod were donated to the Warren Anatomical Museum of Harvard University where they remain on display today. So, on a warm Boston summer day, I made my way to the museum to see the skull and rod for
Every higher institution of learning has their own set of myths and history. Some of them may be vaguely true and some may be highly influential. The history of the institution may have a negative effect on those who look to apply or be a part of the institution. The history of a place sets the epitome of future enrollees. Some of the ghosts that haunt any college may have an extremely negative impact on how they are viewed today. This negative perception of the university can lead to strong economic deficits. Throughout trying to combat negative concepts that are thrust upon an institution, they have resolved issues of ethics, violence and, to most importantly, boost cohesion and moral.
My name is Conny Guillen, I am a mom of three adorable girls, a full time surgery scheduler and full time student in Cypress College. My goal is to become a registered nurse here at Cypress or try to transfer out to a Cal State. This way I can continue working with what I love doing, helping patients feel better.
Johnny Cade did not kill unlawfully and also he can’t apply for a minor committing the crime because he’s 16, one year over the limit. According to Oklahoma law, first-degree murder is a person “unlawfully and with malice aforethought causes the death of another human being.” It is also not manslaughter because it is not a homicide committed without a design to effect death and in the heat of passion, but in a cruel and unusual manner, or by means of a dangerous weapon. Johnny did not have time to think and had to stab Bob to save Ponyboy’s life. Ponyboy was being drowned and to save him, Johnny had to commit the act of homicide. It lists that it was a justifiable homicide because it means that homicide is legal when committed in the lawful
John Proctor may seem like an innocent man that you should feel sorry for when he is accused. He has two children, a beautiful wife and a bunch of land. But, he has a secret. A secret with Abigal WIlliams. I feel that John Proctor was the reason the Salem Witch Trials started, because he had an affair with Abigal and kicked her to the side afterwards causing her to seek revenge.
In 1848, Phineas Gage was a 25 year old working man. An accident occurred to him at work one day which radically changed how the brain was viewed and known to function. He was helping to prepare the way for railroads to be put down when an explosion happened unexpectedly and it sent a 43 inch tamping iron into Phineas Gage’s head through his face, skull and brain. The tamping iron went all the way through and landed some ways off. The remarkable thing was that Gage became conscious within a matter of a few minutes after the incident. Not only did he wake up but he still had the ability to walk and to talk. Even though Gage survived his injuries he was no longer the same.
Did you know Phillis Wheatley was named after a boat? Phillis Wheatley was born around 1753 in Senegal/Gambia. She traveled to Boston, Massachusetts at age 8 in 1761. In this report, you will learn everything about Phillis Wheatley and her life from the day she was born, to the day she died. So…
John Wayne Gacy was born on March 17th,1943 in Chicago Il. He was the second out of three children to be born to Marion Elaine Robinson and John Stanley Gacy. In his early childhood, Gacy’s father was a very abusive alcoholic not only to him and his siblings, but to his wife as well. Gacy had a lot of love and respect for his father even at a young age. His father often called him degrading names such as ‘’Sissy and Queer’’. He and his sister’s would be beaten frequently if they did anything “wrong” in their father’s eye’s. He was close to his sisters and mother but not as close as a ‘’normal’’ family would be. Gacy stated in an interview he never felt like he fit in when he was younger. When Gacy was twelve years old, he was struck by a swingset
Working on a railroad is a dangerous job even in modern times. Thousands of people are hurt either working on railroads or being around railroads each year (Schottenstein, 2015). Therefore, as you can imagine, injuries and deaths were happening at an even higher rate in the 1800s. Phineas Gage was a railroad worker doing a job in Vermont
Another challenge to The Dartmouth’s claim of being “America’s Oldest College Newspaper” is its continuity. Many claim that The Dartmouth experienced one or more periods of discontinuity. It has not been published consistently since its inception. It seems wrong to call a newspaper which has stopped and restarted over the 217 years of its supposed existence to dub itself “America’s Oldest College
Phineas P. Gage was born in 1823. He was a railroad construction worker outside a small town of Cavendish, Vermont. On September 13, 1848, Phineas suffered from a traumatic brain injury, which caused severe damage to parts of his frontal brain due to his accident at work.
LeRoy Columbo was known as the “World’s greatest lifeguard”. What many people don’t know though, is that he was profoundly deaf. He saved many people during his career. Naturally, he gained national attention.
In Ralph Waldo Emerson’s 1837 address to the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Harvard, called “The American Scholar”, he makes clear his thoughts and ideas on the European cultural and cerebral influence on America. Emerson wanted to get across that American scholars needed to create their own independent American literature and academic world, separate from European history.
America’s higher education system has an interesting history. It has advanced substantially since it was established. Unfortunately, its beginnings were based on slavery and cultural genocide. Craig Steven Wilder’s book Ebony and Ivy gives insight into the intriguing beginning of America’s colleges. Wilder focuses mostly on the impact and treatment of both the Native Americans and African Americans within the beginnings of colonial universities, but within these statements, one can see how dramatically the American college system developed in these early years. The book has excellent reviews. In an article posted on December 1, 2014 the African American Review states, “Ebony and Ivy will change the way we think about knowledge-creation at America’s universities…Craig Wilder’s masterly work will stand the test of time and should be required reading for college students across America.” In a Washington Post article published in 2014, Carson Byrd says, “Ebony & Ivy is a meticulously argued work and a valuable resource for multiple disciplines. It strongly connects slavery, science, and higher education to explain how racism is built into the foundation of our colleges and universities. A few of these connections are described below.”
Imagine a situation where your entire personality is changed forever by an object that pierces an area of your brain. Those who have had a frontal lobotomy, whether purposefully or not, have had their personality changed permanently. An unlucky foreman of the Rutland Railroad, Phineas Gage, was on the receiving end of a tragic occurrence that severed the frontal lobe area of his prefrontal cortex. He underwent the experience of having a railroad spike pierce him beneath his left cheek and exit through his skull, consequently injuring an important area of his brain. This occurrence changed one part of Gage’s personality completely, though he seemed almost entirely functional after his accident. The one thing that changed in Gage was his ability to imagine the future. He lived completely present in the moment. The unique accident that affected Phineas Gage can be broken down with various different philosophical approaches to answer what is called the “mind-body problem”. The mind-body problem is composed of attempting to explain things like beliefs, consciousness, emotions, etc., in organisms. Physicalism, dualism, and functionalism all have their unique explanation for the mind-body problem’s implication of Phineas Gage’s accident.
Not only do small parts of Mr. Hibler’s lesson help readers analyze Miss Ferenczi’s character through subtle parallels and her own reactions, but her tangents reveal critical information about her character. One story in particular that rattles the students was about the exotic “gryphon”, a “fabulous beast with the head and wings of an eagle and the body of a lion.” In comparison to their reaction to her, the students are unsure that story, or her information in general, is fact or fiction. The tales of her childhood, with a Hungarian prince as her father and a distinguished pianist as her mother, bring up the notion that she is more bizarre than she appears. Furthermore, her fanciful speech is highlighted by her saying “I want you to think about pyramids...Perhaps...scrolls were novels for the pharaohs, helping them to pass the time in their long voyage through the centuries. But then, I am joking.” To get back to the “reality” of Ancient Egypt, her lesson continues with outlining the pyramid 's “...special cosmic powers.” In order to maintain the relevance of Ancient Egypt in a rural American classroom, she teaches the students that “certain features of the Constitution of the United States are notable for their Egyptian ideas” due to Washington having Egyptian ancestry. Each day she is the substitute for the class, her fantastic stories are center stage and cause a disagreement amongst the students about the validity of her stories.