Pike Reaction

The story is told of a man who jammed a pike into a drill hole filled with gunpowder causing an explosion that sent a pike through his head, but too much surprise, he lived. The man’s name was Phineas Gage and he was the railroad foreman at the time of the incident. The explosion sent the pike firing back at him impaling his forehead leaving permanent damage mentally and physically. Just before he slammed the pike in the drill hole, he turned his head to check on the other men that were loading large rocks into the carts to be carried away. Due to this distraction, some say he forgot to pour the sand into the compact the blow of the gunpowder. Others say he scraped the side of the cavity, creating a spark that ignited the gunpowder causing the blast. He turned his head back and slammed the pike into the hole simultaneously. The blast was instant and sent him stumbling backwards. Through many sources, he claims he never lost consciousness following the incident. The pike stuck in the ground twenty-five feet away. Many witnesses decreased it as covered in blood and brain tissue. This was one of the most traumatic and popular incident of the time-period. The damage caused from the pike was only serious to an extent. The pike entered his head right above the lip, and traveled through his head collecting parts of the underneath of his brain. He fell to the
Leading up to this reading, I always thought that you needed your whole brain to live, but apparently that’s not the case here. Thanks to Phineas Gage’s story, I now know that if something happens to the brain, especially the underneath of my brain there is still a chance that I can live. When I heard about this, I knew that there would be some severe complications such as attitude. I feel that if this didn’t happen, scientist and psychologist would not know that we can or cannot live without parts of our