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this post was submitted on 30 Nov 2023
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Today I Learned (TIL)
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That story as it's commonly told is probably not correct. Everything about the blast and the hole in his head is true, but the drastic personality changes are probably incorrect.
Malcolm MacMillan wrote a masterpiece on what we actually know about the life of Gage, and it's far from the angry impulsive man we hear about in textbooks.
https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262632591/an-odd-kind-of-fame/
Thanks for bringing up MacMillan. Manon Auffret has more recently researched the newspaper coverage of Gage, and her research adds a great deal of evidence supporting MacMillan's arguments. Basically, there's a lot of sensationalist and verifiably false stories about Gage. There's no evidence from the time period of personality changes, and a lot of the wild stories appeared decades after his death, probably fabricated. Allegedly Gage was a drunk, but the evidence shows he abstained completely. Allegedly he beat his wife, but evidence shows he was never married. Allegedly he was a circus performer but there's no evidence from the time period to support this.
https://n.neurology.org/content/98/18_Supplement/1560
Well thank you for pointing me to the abatract. Makes me want to see the actual poster.
Thanks for the read. Didn't know that.