Home
medical
An Odd Kind of Fame

An Odd Kind of Fame

Stories of Phineas Gage

by Malcolm Macmillan

Hardcover
Paperback

576 pp., 6 x 9 in,

Hardcover
9780262133630
Published: July 31, 2000
Publisher: The MIT Press

$50.00

Paperback
9780262632591
Published: July 26, 2002
Publisher: The MIT Press

$40.00

Out of print

Other Retailers:

MIT Press Bookstore
Penguin Random House
Amazon
Barnes and Noble
Bookshop.org
Indiebound
Indigo
Books a Million
Amazon.co.uk
Blackwells
Bookshop.org
Foyles
Hive
Waterstones

Request permissions

Description
Author(s)
Praise

In 1848 a railway construction worker named Phineas Gage suffered an accident that made him a major curiosity of medicine and a significant figure in psychology and neuroscience: an explosion caused a tamping iron to be blown completely through his head, destroying the left frontal lobe of his brain. Gage survived the accident and remained in reasonable physical health for another eleven years. But his behavior changed markedly after the injury, and his case is considered to be the first to reveal the relation between the brain and complex personality characteristics. Yet almost nothing is known about him, and most of what is written is seriously in error.

In this book Malcolm Macmillan, a leading authority on Gage, covers all aspects of this fascinating story. He describes Gage's family and personal background, the context of his work and the accident, and Gage's subsequent history. He analyzes contemporary medical and newspaper reports of the accident and its consequences, and evaluates the treatment Gage received from Dr. John Martyn Harlow. He also looks at Harlow's own life and work. Macmillan examines Gage's place in the history of how functions came to be localized in the brain. He explores the many ways that Gage's tale has been represented and misrepresented through the years in popular, fictional, and scientific works. One of Macmillan's primary aims is to rescue the case from the predominantly fantastic accounts so that its real contribution to modern neuroscience can be understood. Partly for this reason, the appendices include facsimiles of Harlow's 1848 and 1868 reports, the primary sources about Gage, and previously unpublished CT scans of Gage's skull made in 1982.

Bradford Books imprint

Malcolm Macmillan is Adjunct Professor in the School of Psychology at Deakin University, Australia.

An Odd Kind of Fame is a meticulously researched and fascinating chapter in the history of neuroscience. It tells the story of Phineas Gage—perhaps the most famous brain-injured person—whose fate has been continually interpreted and misinterpreted ever since an iron rod passed through his brain in 1848.
Charles G. Gross, Professor of Psychology, Princeton University

...a historical tour de force.
Daniel Tranel, Ph.D.
The New England Journal of Medicine

The book's success lies in...Macmillan's skill as a writer...and his passion for collecting and presenting evidence.
Ian Glynn
Nature

This fascinating book is as compelling as a detective story. I could not put it down, and I learned so much. It is a brilliant combination of serious scholarship and popular history that will surely attract many readers.
Michael Ruse, Lucyle T. Werkmeister Professor of Philosophy, FloridaState University

Books

Authors

On the site

An Odd Kind of Fame

Stories of Phineas Gage

An Odd Kind of Fame

Stories of Phineas Gage

Related Books