LIFE WITHOUT BRAINS

New Zealand Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 4194, 29 August 1874, Page 3

LIFE WITHOUT BRAINS

“ Time was that when the brains wore out aman would die,” but this does not appear to hold good for all time. Dr. Carpenter, in his recently issued work, mentions that children have been born literally without brains, yet have lived for hours, and have even taken nourishment from the breast. A case still more remarkable is said to have occurred in America, and was recently alluded to, as being authenticated by the best of evidence by a professor of the Cornell University. In this instance a foreman of a gang of miners, Phineas P. Gage, was tamping down a charge of powder in a blast when it exploded, and the tamping bar, three feet seven inches long, and one and a quarter inch thick, was blown completely through his skull, entering by the left cheek and emerging in the median line on the top of the head at the back part of the coronal suture. The wound bled profusely, the brain protruded through a hole in the skull two inches, and shreds of brain hung upon the hair. The patient is said to have remained with his mind clear for two days,- to have become delirious for ten days, then to have had a lucid interval, followed by a serious relapse during which life was despaired of, yet he did not die, but seven months after the injury was reported as completely recovered, and lived for twelve years six months and eight days after the date of injury. The effect of the injury upon the man’s mental qualities was somewhat remarkable. Previous to the accident he is described as being a man whose intellectual faculties and animal propensities were well balanced. Subsequently, unth the intellectual capacity of a child he had the animal passions of a strong man. In his normal state he was regarded as a shrewd intelligent workman, given to speaking the truth and persistent in carrying out a plan once resolved upon. In all these respects he afterwards became completely changed, and was especially given to entertaining his friends with recitals having no foundation save in his own fancy. Than the above no fact, perhaps, more strikingly confirms the idea that the brain is a duplex organ. It is difficult, under any other consideration, to see how life, let alone intellect, could have been maintained.