SUMMARY: Seamus Barry is introduced by a friend to a group of doctors at Harvard who have formed a society that meets once a month; every month, each of them must bring in one medical case of interest to share with the others. Dr. Quincey Adams, the eldest of the group, brings in a paper that bores them and reminds them too much of previous cases he's brought in. Dr. Henry J. Bigelow has something tall and thin under a cloth and makes everybody guess what it is - the thing that makes men mad, drives war and empires... and he's put out when a giggling Quincey cuts short his little game by correctly guessing "penis" - it's a stalactite that looks uncannily like a gigantic male member.

Photos by Mandi Moss

SUMMARY: Seamus is asked for a medical curiosity to share with the fellowship, and though he's hesitant, he shares with them an article he recently read about a man named Phineas Gage, a railroad construction foreman who had a tamping rod blown directly through his skull by an explosion - and though his wounds were declared mortal, he has so far survived for 22 days, and the wounds in his head are healing. The doctors are skeptical of the story, but decide they'd like to examine him in the interest of advancing medical science. Word reaches Gage's physician, Dr. John Harlow. Gage is reluctant at first to visit Boston and doesn't see what good it will do. He then insists on going for a walk to the general store a good mile away, against Harlow's advice - and becomes irrationally angry when he suspects Harlow of stealing some pebbles that belong to him, which he says he would not so much as sell for any money. He is subsequently suddenly enthusiastic about visiting Boston. Harlow is quietly intrigued by these aberrations in Gage's personality. Meanwhile, back at Harvard, a Miss Harriet Hunt - a medical student from a women's college - has been repeatedly rejected from studying medicine at Harvard because she's a woman, and she reads them the riot act, telling the scoffing and condescending doctors that one day their attitudes will be considered as obsolete as the dinosaur. But in the meantime, she will bear their requests to bring them tea while she learns about medicine from the sidelines.

Photos by Mandi Moss

SUMMARY: Humble Dr. Harlow - with aid from letters from those who witnessed the initial accident - describes Phineas' injuries and his treatment for the smug and skeptical Harvard doctors in graphic detail, as well as the details of his miraculous recovery. He agrees to bring Phineas to Harvard for observation... though the Harvard doctors appear to be treating the impending visit as a sideshow for their own amusement.

Photos by Mandi Moss