A HOLE IN THE HEAD, Phineas P.Gage Opens Up.

I suppose there are a hundred ways to measure the experience of Phineas P. Gage.The most unlikely and least helpful might be the field of phrenology, which held that just as a lifetime of muscular exertion leaves evidence on the leg and arm bones, mental endeavors - personality, intelligence and emotions - leave tell-tale imprints on the top of the skull. Or so the theory went. Practitioners, like the American Orsen Squire Fowler, would run their fingers over the bumps on your head and divined your occupation, your character flaws, even why you were having trouble sleeping. But as Fowler acknowledged, "....phrenology is either fundamentally true or else untrue..." - a statement, which standing alone,  is undoubtedly true. But the ultimate proof of phrenology would be provided by the words actual words, "Pheneas Gage".

Phineas was originally an Egyptian title, meaning a dark or bronze skinned oracle. He first appears in the Old Testament  (Numbers 25, verses 7-8), as a priest's son who spies the Hebrew prince Zimri entering the Tabernacle with a Midianite woman. In a fit of offended religious passion, Phineas runs them both through with a spear. For this double murder, Moses rewards Phineas. Not what Jesus would have done, certainly.  but not until his 19th Century namesake did a Phineas pay the price for that ancient excess of zeal.

His family name was English. Almost half of all modern English words were adopted from the French spoken in Normandy in 1066, the year the Normans conquered England. This Old French was mostly based on the everyday language spoken by Roman soldiers. In their Vulgate Latin a "jalle" was a measure of liquid, equal to a gallon, and a "jalgium" was the stick or rod inserted into an amphora to measure how much wine was left. Over centuries the pronunciation became a "gaunger". And after the "Great Vowel Shift" in English at the end of the Middle Ages, the pronunciation was shortened to "gauge". Thus a gauge is a standard of measurement, or a tool used to measure. And by a happy coincidence, those two words describe the 19th century Phineas Gage perfectly - an oracle of measurement.

In 1823 Phineas P. Gage was born in the southern New Hampshire village of Lebanon. He grew into a strikingly handsome young man, and a natural leader. At 24 years of age he became a "Navvie" for the Burlington and Rutland Railroad. The term was borrowed from canal builders who plotted their work cross-country by compass. Inland navigators they were called. Phineas quickly rose to the level of foreman, and was entrusted with the dangerous job of blasting through the hard New England granite to ensure a level road bed for the rails.

In 1825 Englishman George Stephenson's locomotive "The Rocket" took less than two hours to haul 36 wagons of coal nine miles to the docks on the River Tees. His steam locomotive was not only a revolution in speed, but also reduced transportation costs by two thirds. George had set his new rails four feet eight and one-half inches apart because that was the "gauge", or measure of the old rails, used when the wagons were pulled by horses. Customers now literally followed in Stephenson's tracks. Of course, George had since improved on his design, adding six inches for increased stability. But rather than replace these 1,200 miles of substandard rails already in use, the royal commission of 1845 decreed that four feet eight and one-half inches would be the "Standard Gauge" for Britain, and eventually most of the rest of the world. That same year, 1845, George Stephenson, "Father of the railways" was married for the third time. And shortly thereafter he died.

Three years later, on Wednesday 13 September, 1848,  a Rutland and Burlington Railroad construction crew, headed by the 25 year-old foreman Phineas P.Gage, was preparing a road bed outside of the little mill town of Cavendish, Vermont.  Each member had a simple job, which is to say their collective task was a technically complicated jigsaw puzzle of mundane occupations, which when combined in a specific order, changed the world.

In this case, an engineer would determine where rock was to be removed. Other men would drill a hole into the rock. Phineas Gage would then pour a measure of black powder into the hole. Then he would pour a measure of sand on top of the powder, and firmly tamp it down.  Then Phineas would insert a fuse through the sand into the powder. Then he would drop a 35 pound, three and a-half foot long iron tamping rod into the hole to compact the charge. Finally, Phineas would light the fuse.

After the resulting explosion, workers would remove the broken rock while the engineer determined where the next charge would be placed

Toward the end of a had day's work, at just about 4:30 P.M., Phineas ordered his weary drilling team to take cover yet again.

Again he poured black powder into the drill hole, but in haste this time he forgot to add the sand. So when he shoved down the iron tamping rod, it sparked against the granite. And without the insulating sand, that set off the black powder.

There was a sharp loud crack. In something less than one second, the 35 pound rod was driven out of the hole, penetrating just below Gage's left cheek bone, destroying his left eye, plowing through his brain and blasting out the top of his skull. 

The tamping rod landed 80 feet away, smeared in blood and brain matter.. The startled crew rushed to Phineas' assistance and found him awake and alert. (Below, A)

With assistance Phineas clambered aboard an ox cart, and suffered the jarring forty-five minute long, three quarters of a mile ride back to his boarding house (above, T)  in Cavendish. , where he waited on his front porch for an hour for the arrival of Dr. Edward  Harlow.

 "I first noticed the wound," wrote the good doctor, "before I alighted from my carriage, the pulsations of the brain being very distinct." 

The doctor recorded that his patient had a pulse of 60, was breathing regularly and his pupils were reactive. He reported no pain. "Mr. Gage...was relating the manner in which he was injured to the bystanders," wrote Dr. Williams, ".(and then) got up and vomited; the effort...pressed out about half a teacupful of the brain, which fell upon the floor."  After an initial exam, Dr. Williams escorted Gage to the local hospital.  Over the next 24 hours Gage slipped into a coma, and his conditioned worsened until Williams lifted open the skull again and reported a "mold" growing on the brain. Williams wiped this away, and replaced the skull fragments. After that Phineas quickly  improved, woke up and appeared to recover fully, except for the missing left eye. 

The tamping rod had performed the first recorded frontal lobotomy in modern history on Phineas Gage's brain, disconnecting and destroying that part of his mind which dealt with "....future consequences... chooses between good and bad actions... (and) override(s) and suppress unacceptable social responses..." (Wikapedia - "Frontal Lobe"). Patients subjected to a frontal lobotomy do "...not respond to imaginary situations, rules, or plans for the future...pursued immediate gratification without regard for consequences.... (and) tended to be distracted by immediate stimuli" In addition, the patient displays "an empty euphoric effect...(and) can get unusually aggressive and tends to use puns a lot." In other words, Phineas Gage was a new gauge.

http://www.psywww.com/intropsych/ch02_human_nervous_system/lobotomy_effects.html

Despite occasional setbacks, Phineas was able to travel the thirty miles to his mother's home, in Lebanon, New Hampshire in time for Christmas, 1848.  He returned to Cavendish in April of 1849, and Dr. Harlow noted "his physical health is good, and I am inclined to say he has recovered. Has no pain in (his) head, but says it has a queer feeling which he is not able to describe."  Phineas' cryptic response brings to mind the 12 year old boy who was subjected to a frontal lobotomy over a century later, in 1960. He later told an interviewer, "I've always felt different - wondered if somethings missing from my soul."

Phineas never worked as a "navvie" again. Briefly he tried selling his story via public speaking engagements, and displaying his rod. But handsome though he still was, that career never suited him. Despite rumors that he appeared in P.T. Barnum's museum in New York, there is no evidence he ever did. Instead, in 1851, he found a job at the Hanover Inn in Dartmouth, New Hampshire, as a stable hand and coach driver. Perhaps he found animals a better gauge of Gage than humans.

Then in 1854 he went to work for another stage line , this time in Valparaiso, Chile. He took with him his "constant companion", that iron tamping rod. Phineas held down his new job for seven years, far longer than you would expect from an unpredictable violent man. Those too are just rumors.

But one of the occasional side effects of a frontal lobotomy are seizures caused by scar tissue within the brain. And those now struck Phineas. In 1859 Phineas rejoined his mother, sister and her husband, who were now living in California. He got a job as a farm hand in Santa Clara County, at the southern end of San Francisco Bay. But the seizures got worse, and on 21 May, 1860, he died of what the doctors called complications of epilepsy, six months short of twelve years after he forgot to load the sand atop the black powder.

Phineas Gage died just as the American Civil War was exploding. Over the next four years the number of survivors with brain injuries multiplied.

Doctors now had patients and skulls aplenty to examine, and upon reflection they reached several conclusions. First, it was clear that the bumps on the top of the head were not denotative of anything going on inside the skull. Phrenology was bunk. But the disabilities of various head wound survivors was proof that different sections of the brain did perform different functions.

And third, the old adage that medicine is the search for profit after death, was confirmed when in 1866, Dr. Harlow convinced Phineas' sister and brother-in-law to disinter Phineas just long enough to chop off his head and ship it and the tamping rod back to Boston. There Doctor Harlow used it as an exhibit in his second (and more colorful) paper. It was this version of events which made Phineas famous as the the man who reset the gauge  for brain injuries.

Meanwhile the standard gauge of American railroads is still just four feet eight and one-half inches. I guess some things never change.

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BRIBERY AS A MEASURE OF SUCCESS

I have no doubt that when Stephen Puter put two $1,000 bills on the Senator's desk, John Mitchell promptly picked them up. At his trial John denied he took the bribe, but nothing in his previous life even hints at the possibility that the Oregon scoundrel would have left that much cash unattended so close to his own pocket even for an instant. He was a garden variety sociopath, raised to high office by his ambition. Noted one Oregon newspaper, “His political methods are indeed pitched on a sufficiently low scale, but not below his methods as a lawyer.” That did not make him unusual for a gilded age politician. It was the reliability of his depravity that made him a star.

Senator John H. Mitchell grew up John M. Hupple about 30 miles north of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In 1855, when he was twenty, John was fired from his teaching job after impregnating his 15 year old student Sarah Hoon. Forced to marry the unfortunate girl, John switched professions, and two years later he passed the state bar exam. However, the new lawyer beat his Sarah in public so often that a patrilineal grand jury was convened. John escaped being indicted by convincing his naive now 19 year old wife into dropping the charges. Whereupon John stole $4,000 from his legal clients, abandoned Sarah and his three children and fled to California with his mistress, teacher Maria Brinker. A few years later Maria's medical expenses threatened to consume John's ill gotten grubstake. So, ala Newt Gingrich, he abandoned her as well.

Arriving in Portland, Oregon in 1860 (above) with his new mistress, Mattie Price, John switched his moniker to John Hupple Mitchell and hung out his shingle. In a matter of weeks John was named the city attorney to the 1,000 inhabitants of what the locals appropriately called, “mud city”. His skills as a lawyer could be attested by the unfortunate Marcus Neff, an ambitious illiterate seeking help in expediting his 10 year old homestead filing.  Neff had paid $2.50 an acre for his 160 acre property, occupied and worked it, and in May of 1862 Neff paid John Mitchell $6.50 to file an affidavit reaffirming his bonafidies. Then, in November of 1863, John Mitchell sued his own client for what he claimed were $253.14 in unpaid fees.

In court, the amoral attorney Mitchell (above) swore under oath that Neff could not be found, even tho in July of 1863 the Oregon land office successfully delivered the final homestead deed to Neff in California. In February of 1864 Neff's homestead was sold at sheriff's auction, where it was purchased by future Oregon governor and Portland mayor, Sylvester Pennoyer, aka “His Eccentricity”, AKA “Sylester Annoyer”. John got the $294. 98 paid by Sylvester, and Sylvester got the 160 acre homestead. It would take a decade and require the intervention of the U.S. Supreme Court, before poor Mr. Neff's stolen property would be returned.

As this episode demonstrated, John Mitchell was always willing to help the Oregon power structure get richer, to his own benefit of course. In particular there was his toadying with the “stagecoach king” Ben Holladay (above), who had just sold his California mail routes to Wells Fargo for $1.5 million ($24 million today). Beginning in August of 1868, and financed largely by distant German investors, Holladay began building a railroad along the Willamette river valley, from the capital of Salem north to Portland, and then south over Grant's Pass to California. It was Holladay who, in 1864, financed John's divisive election as President of the Oregon State Senate – it took 53 days and 27 ballots. And in 1872, Holladay supplied $15,000 in bribes to secure John's election by that same legislature as a U.S. Senator. So obvious was Mitchell's toadying for his patron, ( "Whatever is Ben Holladay's politics is my politics, and whatever Ben Holladay wants I want") that both offices were one term endeavors. But it remains a testament to John's grit and greed that when Ben Holladay went bankrupt in the “Panic” of 1873, John simply switched his loyalty to the next richest man on his horizon.

The 18 year old Friedrich Weyerhauser (above) arrived in America in 1852. He so hated working on his cousins' Pennsylvania farm that he drifted west and landed a job on the Rock Island Railroad in Illinois, which led him to a job in a saw mill, making railroad ties. He ended up owning the mill, and started buying lumber mills until the Weyerhaeuser Syndicate controlled every tree processed on the upper Mississippi River. The only thing standing between Friedrich and total domination of the lumber industry was that he did not own the land on which the trees grew. Oregon offered him a remedy to that little problem.

Out on the Great Plains, railroads could be financed by awarding them a 20 mile wide swath of government land on either side of the rails. The builders could then sell this land to homesteaders who then became the completed railroad's customers. That was how Holladay financed his Willamette Valley line. But in Oregon’s mostly vertical terrain, money grew on trees. The state has been selling lumber to China since 1833. By 1870 there were 173 sawmills in Oregon. And it was the combination of the well intentioned homesteader program and Weyerhaeuser's ambition which remade Oregon politics for the next hundred years.

The middle man between Oregon's past and its future was one time surveyor Stephen A. Douglas Puter.     In his book, “ Looters of the Public Domain” Stephen described a process which began on board foreign vessels tied up at Portland's docks. “I have known agents of the company to take at one time as many as twenty-five men...to the county courthouse”, he wrote, “where they would...declare their intention to become citizens...(then) they would proceed direct to the land office and make their filings, all the location papers having previously been made out. Then they would appear before Fred W. Bell, a notary public, and execute an acknowledgment of a blank deed (transferring the land to the lumber company), receive the stipulated price of $50, and return to their ships...As fast as this land came into the market, the (Weyerhaeuser) company gobbled it all up.”

All told, it cost "entrymen" like Puter about $320 for each 160 acre homestead. Then, instead of land hungry farmers, Puter sold the parcels to Weyhausser through his railroad or lumber companies for a hundred dollar profit. The Oregonian newspaper estimated that between 1870 and 1904 75% of all land transferred in Oregon was sold in this fraudulent way. The great scam only came to an end because in 1903 Stephen Puter was convicted of fraud, and after serving 18 months was pardon by President Teddy Roosevelt after agreeing to turn state's evidence. With Puter's testimony,  Federal grand juries indicted more than 100 people, and convicted 33 of them. But no where on any legal papers did the name of Friedrich Weyerhauser appear, and his corporation's titles to the land were never questioned. However, John H. Mitchell's name did show up.

When John had first arrived in Washington, D.C. back in 1874, he found the capital abuzz with stories about his abandoned Sarah, back in Pennsylvania. Since John had married Mattie Price in 1862, without divorcing Sarah, he was now a bigamist. But the Senate decided morality was a matter for the voters back in Oregon, and allowed John Mitchel to sit on the Senate Railroad Committee, which is just where Ben Holladay wanted him. After his defeat for re-election in 1879,  John tried for the state legislature, but lost. In 1885 he was campaigning for a return to the Senate when, four days before the election, "The Oregonian" published love letters John had written to Mattie's sister. What kind of a man carries on a five year sexual liaison with his wife's sister? Evidently, in Oregon, a re-elected United States Senator. An opponent called his election “a disgrace to the state and a reproach to humanity.”  But it stuck.

And yet John was easily re-elected yet again in 1890, and tirelessly maneuvered to legally steal land from Indian reservations to benefit Weyerhauser's syndicate.  In 1896 John ran yet again, but the opposition finally adopted John's own “political ethics (which) justified any means that would win the battle” The legislature was deadlocked for two years, leaving the state without a second Senator. Then, in 1901 the 65 year old Mitchell won his last campaign. And it was in Senator John Mitchel’s Washington office on Sunday, March 9, 1902, where Stephen Puter laid down those two $1,000 bills. And John picked them up.

The newly named Chairman of the Committee on Inter-oceanic Canals, now grown old and fat, responded to his indictment with a carefully worded press release. “I defy any man to charge me successfully with any conduct that is otherwise than honorable” he wrote, adding “I am sure I cannot be connected in any way with any land frauds”. No where did John claim innocence. He merely dared others to prove his guilt. So they did.

This first trial of the century for the 20^th century was held in June of 1905 in the newly expanded Court House on Pioneer Square in downtown Portland. It had to compete for the public's attention with the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition out on Guild's Lake. While the fair, whose federal funding Senator Mitchell had pushed, attracted over 11,000 visitors a day, the courtroom could hold less than a hundred spectators. But it was the tribunal which attracted far more newspaper coverage. Testifying against Senator Mitchell was  Stephen Puter, and John’s law partner, Judge Albert H. Tanner, and even John's personal secretary. The defense tried reminding the jury about the recent death of John's daughter, and the Senator's age – he had just turned 70. But on Monday July 3, 1905 the jury found him guilty, anyway. It was the climax to the Oregon Land Fraud Trials, and a fitting end to Mark Twain's Gilded Age. John was sentenced to six months in jail and a $1,000 fine.

He never served an hour in jail, of course. And he never paid the fine. Not because of his political connections, this time, but because of a visit to the dentist. Five months after the verdict, on Friday December 8, 1905, John had four teeth pulled, and the strain was too much for the old thief’s heart. He died, said the press, of complications after surgery. The old Republican was replaced by a Democrat.

John H. Mitchell – ne John Mitchell Hupple – was survived by a second daughter, Marie Elisabeth, who in 1892 had married the very wealthy Alfred Gaston, the 5^th duke of Rochefouald and Duke of Anville. But the only place in Oregon which still carries his name is the tiny hamlet of Mitchell, with less than 200 residents. Three time in its history the town has been destroyed by floods, and three times by fires. But the residents keep rebuilding, making it a perfect monument to a man described  as lacking either ethics or ability, but making up for that with “persistence and (a) desire for success at any price.”

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THE CONTINENTAL LIAR

I blame the Democrats for what happened to James Gillespie Blaine (above). At least in part. The donkeys had jumped the ideology shark with their "Southern Strategy" in the run up to the Civil War, and were not present in Washington to perform their nominal job of cleaning up any rotting fruit that dropped from the Republican tree when James Blaine was first elected to congress in 1862. Nor was it James’s fault that his brother-in-law, Eben C. Stanwood, was so greedy. There is always a lot of money floating around Washington during a war, the kind of easy money even a brother-in-law could get his hands on. And James Blaine would have to have been a saint if he had not been tempted by the money to be made by manipulating the stock in the Little Rock and Fort Smith Railroad. Of course James did not have to jump in quite so enthusiastically or so often.

The Little Rock Railroad was supposed to have been completed to Fort Smith before the civil war broke out, but it went bankrupt. And that was when Boston speculator Josiah Fisher convinced a group of investors (including the brother-in-law, Eben) to buy up the worthless stock for pennies on the dollar. It was Eben - and another crooked “investor” named Joshua Caldwell - who dangled fat sales commission checks in front of the Congressman James Blaine.  Now this was a barely started railroad, deep in the financially devastated post civil war rebel south. But from the second he heard about those commission checks,  James Blaine wanted in.

In fact, the Maine Congressman wrote to Railroad man Josiah  Fisher on 10 September 1867, in a letter marked “Strictly Private”, “…my position will enable me to render you services of vital importance and value….I do not feel I shall be a dead head....Are you not willing to aid me (elsewhere) where you can do so with profit to yourself at the same time?”  Fisher did not reply to this crude solicitation, so evidently James paid him a visit in person. We know about the agreement they reached in private because Blaine was helpful enough to lay out the details in a second letter he wrote to Fisher, which he helpfully marked “Burn after Reading.”  Who wouldn't want to save  a letter marked that?

By September of 1869 James Blaine had sold over $130,000 in Little Rock railroad bonds (worth about $2 million today), mostly to other railroad barons, who, of course, did not need or want bonds they knew were worthless. But still, James was paid very handsome commissions for those sales. By then passengers could actually board the train in Little Rock. However the passengers were required to cover the last fifty miles to Fort Smith in a stagecoach, a 3 ½ hour living hell of dust, mud and potholes.

Not surprisingly, the railroad went bankrupt yet again, as the railroad barons knew it must. But despite the business having failed (again), Congressman Blaine was still demanding that he be “compensated” -   in addition to the commission checks he had already cashed. Fisher was ready to tell Blaine to drop dead  until one of the other robber barons reminded Fisher, “…it is important that he should be conciliated…However unreasonable in his demand…he should in some manner be appeased.” So Speaker Blaine was “appeased” with loans he was not expected to repay. But Banker Fisher was not likely to forget he had been made to feel like one of the suckers of his own scam.

After serving three very profitable terms as Speaker of the House, James Blaine stepped down so he could concentrate on a run for the White House. Just think how much money he could make as President! As the campaign season of 1876 approached, he was a serious possibility. However, things had changed in Washington by then. The Southern Democrats were back, and had captured control of the House of Representatives. That gave them the power of subpoena, and they used it to subpoena a certain Mr. James Mulligan, who was a Boston bookkeeper in the employ of Boston speculator Josiah Fisher. Remember him?

It seems that Mr. Mulligan had never burned an incriminating letter in his life. On 31 May, 1876, under the gentle guidance of Judiciary Committee Chairman, Democrat Proctor Knott  (I love that name!), Mr. Mulligan casually admitted that he had in his possession “certain letters written by Representative  Blaine to Mr. Fisher”.  Given the panicked high sign by Blaine, the senior Republican on the committee immediately moved to adjourn for the day. 

That night  Blaine appeared at Mr. Mulligan’s door at the Riggs House hotel, and proceeded to chase poor Mr. Mulligan all over his room,. Blaine was begging and whining and reminding Mulligan what disgrace would mean to Blaine's poor children. Finally, because he was embarrassed and cornered  Mulligan allowed the Congressman to read the letters. But once he had his hands on them Blaine announced that since they were “his” letters, he was going to keep them, and he left with the letters safely in his own pocket.

On the floor of Congress over the next several days the Democrats demanded that Blaine hand the letters back over.  Finally, on 5 June, James Blaine rose to respond in front of packed House galleries. He thundered, “I have defied the power of the House to compel me to produce these letters…but, sir,…I am not afraid to show the letters. Thank God Almighty, I am not afraid to show them.” 

As proof of his willingness to show the letters, he showed the letters. He waved them over his head. He did not allow anyone to read them, of course. “These are they…and with some sense of humiliation,…with a sense of outrage which I think any man in my position would feel, I invite the confidence of 44 million of my countrymen while I read those letters from this desk.” And so he did read from the letters, with commentary and asides in his own defense. The Republicans were persuaded, but the Democrats were not.

Having earlier read the letters himself, Chairman Knott (above) knew that Blaine had avoided reading certain incriminating sections of the letters, and he rose to challenge Blaine’s version.

And that was when James Blaine pulled the rabbit out of his...I'll say hat. Suddenly changing the subject, he asked Knott if the committee had received a transatlantic cable from Joshua Caldwell (remember him?), supporting Blaine’s version of events. In fact Caldwell had sent such a cable. But Caldwell was a well known liar, and nobody in their right mind would believe anything he said not under oath - certainly Proctor Knott didn't. Still, that was not the question. 

Representative Blaine stomped right up to Proctor’s desk and accused him, nose to nose, of suppressing the Caldwell cable. Blushing, Proctor was forced to stammer that indeed they had received such a cable. The galleries erupted in thunderous applause for Blaine.

Chairman Proctor Knott himself described Blaine's performance as “…one of the most extraordinary exhibitions of histrionic skill, one of the most consummate pieces of acting that ever occurred upon any stage on earth.” Blaine had so completely turned the tables on the Democrats that nobody except them seemed to notice that he had not, in fact, denied the basic allegations of bribery.

Still, the effort had extracted a toll on Congressman James Blaine. That Sunday he collapsed on the front steps of his church, and passed out. If he was stricken going into the church or coming out I have been unable to confirm.  Maybe God sucked all the air out of this lungs for a second, just to remind him of who was in charge. If so, Blaine failed to take the hint. Luckily, he was bedridden for several weeks, during which time the committee investigation faded until it simply evaporated. But James G. Blaine's dreams of the White House had to be put off for the time being. Of course, being one of the biggest egomaniacs of his age, he never said never. And come 1884 he would try for the White House yet again. Which is when those letters would resurface, again.

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