In 1848, a young foreman on a railroad blasting crew suffered a brutal accident: A 13-pound tamping rod shot through his left cheek, behind his eye, and up through his left frontal lobe. Exiting his skull, the rod flew another 50 feet through the air. Miraculously, Phineas Gage survived, and with few physical problems except for having lost the sight in his left eye. But his personality was forever changed. Once polite and proper, he became by turns obstinate, childish, and crude, prone to uttering gross profanities. One of the two doctors who had been called to the scene of the accident kept track of Gage's behavior and concluded that the accident had destroyed "the equilibrium, or balance, between his intellectual faculties and animal propensities." Unable to get his old job back (employers and friends shunned him), he drifted into such jobs as a stable hand and coach driver. He also appeared with P .T. Barnum's circus as a sideshow freak. In 1861, nearly 13 years after the accident, Phineas Gage died in San Francisco at the age of 37.