Phineas Gage’s doctor had this picture of the tamping iron and Phineas’s skull taken in 1868 to document the case. Seeing the iron and the skull side by side makes it difficult to believe that Gage survived, but he did. He died 12 years later in 1860 at age 36, probably from hypothermia stemming from an epileptic seizure (Fleischman, 2002).
Courtesy, Woburn Public Library, Woburn, MA/Glennon Archives