An injury with an improbable outcome that occurred to a to a railway foreman on 13 September 1848 had an influence on the science of localisation of brain function. Phineas Gage was the foreman of a railway construction crew working just outside Cavendish, Vermont. He was the company's most capable foreman with a well balanced mind and shrewd business sense.

Gage was tamping an explosion charge. A tamping iron is a crowbar-like tool used to compact an explosive charge into the bottom of a borehole. The tamping iron used by Gage was 43 inches in length, 1.25 inches in diameter at one end, tapering over a distance of 12 inches to a diameter of 0.25 inches at the other end, and weighing about 13 pounds.Tamping involves packing of a charge into as small a space as possible at the point chosen for the explosion. An accidental explosion of the charge Phineas Gage …