The Injury Of Phineas Gage

The movie Varsity Blues is riddled with sports related injuries. The audience is shown the dangers of playing while injured, as well as the consequences of the immense pressure put on student athletes. In almost all cases of injury in the movie, the treatment of these injuries is carried out entirely wrong. While watching the movie, the audience sees injuries ranging from torn ligaments and muscle strains to a broken nose, a concussion, and dehydration.

Walter Freeman, seen as one of the founders of the procedure, changed drastically upon its discovery. To start, Freeman partnered with a fellow surgeon in order to be able to offer the procedure. As the ability of lobotomies wore thinner and became more frowned upon in society, Freeman basically ignored the surrounding evidence and continued on with the procedures, even traveling to promote its benefits. Due to his early found success, Freeman became a huge piece of the lobotomy puzzle. However, when everything came crashing down on him, the only thing that didn’t change was himself. His involvement with the lobotomy procedure brought him to be dehumanized from his old self as he was one of the few who felt the procedure had benefits, despite the evidence surrounding

The day of Phineas accident, he was performing his work duties on the construction of a railroad track. His duty was to set explosive charges in holes drilled into large pieces of rock so that they could be broken up and removed. He had to fill the holes with gunpowder, with a fuse, and then pack in sand with a large tamping iron. Because gage was distracted on September 13, 1948, he forgot to fill in one of the holes with sand. In result, when he went to pack down the

World War II took many lives away from people, physically and mentally. The struggle inside of Phineas’ mind about if he meant to hurt Gene on purpose is a type of war. He tries to reassure himself that it was only an accident, but he can’t help but think that he could have done it out of envy of Gene’s talents. Some soldiers came back home mentally disturbed and not the same as they were before the war. Gene visited a friend from school that had just gotten back from the war and he was an extremely different

Al Toon, father of Saints receiver Nick Toon, was forced to leave professional football after sustaining nine concussions in eight years of professional football. Football is one of the most dangerous games. As the years go on, more and more rules are being written to prevent the danger, but danger is the nature of the game. Most of these rules are for the protection of the players, but there are times when injuries can be a good thing. The Philadelphia Eagles were 3-5 to start the year, but Michael Vick was injured and the backup quarterback led the team to be 10-6, win the division, and almost beat the New Orleans Saints in the playoffs. "About 1.7 million Americans suffer a traumatic brain injury (TBI) every year,

To describe Phineas is a rather challenging thing to do. Being the only character with no given last name, Finny was truly a one of a kind. He was a perky, natural leader, and did everything almost perfectly and swiftly through Gene´s point of view. He was also very athletic, hyperactive, and one of the few faults he had was that he did not perform well academically. His extreme athleticism was cut short when Gene jounced Finny off of the limb of the tree that they would always jump from, maiming him. Then, with his wounded legs he continued to be cheerful. There is not a quote that depicts Finny from any other character better than, ¨No one who was tone deaf ever loved music so much. I think his shortcoming increased his appreciation; he loved it all indiscriminately—Beethoven, the latest love ditty, jazz, a hymn—it was all profoundly musical to Phineas,¨ (Knowles 161). Life was music to Finny. He made the best of every situation, no matter the setback, and did whatever it may be in a proud but modest way.

Phineas Gage faced the most adversity. He worked with a long, skinny iron pole and dynamite. On September 13, 1848, he accidentally blasted this rod through his head, causing major damage to his frontal lobe. He became very irritable, and treated people very badly. The first reason he faced the most is that he suffered the rest of his life. He was a different person, and as his friends say, “Gage was no longer Gage.” This shows that the people that knew him both before AND after the accident. The doctors that wrote journals on this topic are not reliable, as they only have what Dr. Harlow says.

1. Era I – “Mechanical Medicine” began in the 1860’s. Its focus is on surgical procedures and drugs. The thought was that health and illness are only physical in nature and consciousness is equated to functioning of the brain. Era I thinking in displayed in review of psychiatric care in the early 1900 with the use of frontal lobotomies to cure hysteria. The thought was that performing a surgical procedure on the brain will remove the area that is causing the Hysteria. Era I focuses on performing a procedure or providing a medication to fix the body physically, while Era III takes into account the patients perception of health, their stats of mind and their support

Oliver Sacks is a very famous doctor of neurology as well as a writer. He spent most of his adult life treating patients. Oliver Sacks mostly concentrated on disorders of the brain and nervous system. In a lot of the cases that Sacks dealt with, there was nothing he was able to do to heal the patients. His goal was to find a way to live with and accept their condition as well as possible. Sacks enjoyed dealing with cases mostly about experiences of real people struggling to live with unusual conditions. That’s where he wanted to find ways to help these patients to the best of his and medical ability out there. Throughout his cases he studied he came across patients who had different

Phineas Gage was a railroad worker in the 1800's who was working on blowing up the side of the mountain. This process involved drilling a hole into a rock, filling it with blasting powder, then putting sand on top of the powder before packing it down with an iron rod. One day, Phineas Gage forgot to put sand in the hole, so when he started packing it with the iron rod, it reacted with the blasting powder and created a spark. This caused the iron rod to rocket upward towards Phineas Gage. The explosion drove the iron rod through Phineas Gage's head, entering underneath his left cheekbone, going through the left frontal area of his brain, and exiting through the midline of his head. To everybody's surprise, he survived the extreme injury and

Injuries in American football, can some of them be prevented? With the increase in injuries in football coaches are looking for better ways to try and prevent unnecessary injuries. Even though you cannot prevent all the injuries as a coach you want to at least prevent some.

During the early to mid 20th century, not much was known about mental illnesses or what caused them, which was the way it had been for many years before. One of the somewhat common perceptions about mental illness was that these disorders were caused by possession or negative spirits. This can be most likely be attributed to the wide influence of the catholic church and the belief that exorcisms or psychosurgery could possibly cure incurable or intractable mental illnesses. Psychosurgery developed into the more common procedure known as a lobotomy, where the connections between the prefrontal lobe and the prefrontal cortex are cut with the intention of freeing the patient from delusions and side effects of other mental illnesses. Lobotomies began as a surgical procedure which needed to be performed in an operating room, as it required holes to be drilled through the scalp and into the skull. This meant that though the procedure was seen to show some

For this assignment, I choose to research Phineas Gage. I remember learning about his accident in high school but I could not recall any details of his story. Phineas Gage was a 26-year-old male from New Hampshire. He was in Cavendish, Vermont working had the foreman of the cutting crew of a railroad bed. On September 13th 1948, Phineas was using a piece of iron to pack explosive powder into a hole. The powder detonated and the iron shot through his left cheek, across his brain and exited his skull. The iron rod itself was approximately 43 inches long and weighted around 13 pounds. Surviving the accident gage became blind in his left eye.

The central idea of the novel is about medical science, how Gage contributed to it, and how his life was affected by the accident. I know those because of these pieces of evidence. First, on pg. 74 it says “It explains what happened to our knowledge of the brain as a result” (referring to the result of Gage's death). This tells me that Gage increased the scientists knowledge of the brain due to his accident. Next, on pg. 75 it says “ He died with his family around him, the only people who knew both the old and new Phineas”. What the author is saying is that Gage's life changed after the accident and he turned into a new person, and his family were the only ones who knew both him before and him after the accident. Lastly, on pg. 70 the novel

The two psychological interventions that were administered to McMurphy while in the mental institution were a lobotomy and shock therapy. A lobotomy is the removal of the portion from the frontal lobe of the brain. This procedure’s main goal is to eliminate aggressive or violent behavior. This invention took place in 1935 by Dr. Antonio Egas Moniz. However, by the late 1940s the realization those individuals undergoing lobotomy procedures took place without initiative became apparent. Although the methods of a lobotomy have changed the basic underlying idea of neurosurgery exists today in the form of “psychosurgery” (Encarta 2000). Shock Therapy uses electric current or drugs to control psychotic disorders. In 1933, Dr. Manfred Sakel used drugs and instituted insulin shock to control mainly Schizophrenia. In 1938, Drs. U. Cerletti and L. Bini used electroshock therapy to treat severe depression (i.e. manic depressive psychoses). Alternating current through the brain using parallel