In 1848, an iron bar pierced his brain, his case providing new insights on both trauma and recovery Imagine the modern-day reaction to a news story about a man surviving a three-foot, 7-inch, 13½-pound iron bar being blown through his skull — taking a chunk of his brain with it. Then imagine that this happened in 1848, long before modern medicine and neuroscience. That was the case of Phineas Gage. Whether the Vermont construction foreman, who was laying railroad track an