John Martyn Harlow

John Martyn Harlow
Born November 25, 1819(1819-11-25)
Whitehall, New York
Died May 13, 1907(1907-05-13) (aged 87)
Woburn, Massachusetts
Education Philadelphia School of Anatomy, Jefferson Medical College
Occupation Physician
Known for Brain-injury survivor Phineas Gage was under his care.
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John Martyn Harlow (November 25, 1819 - May 13, 1907) was an American physician primarily remembered for his attendance on brain-injury survivor Phineas Gage, and for his published reports on Gage's accident and subsequent history.

Harlow was born in Whitehall, New York on November 25, 1819. He studied at Philadelphia School of Anatomy and graduated from Jefferson Medical College, Philadelphia in 1844.[1] His practice in Cavendish, Vermont, near which Gage's accident occurred in 1848, brought Gage under his care. In 1857 he left Cavendish due to poor health,[2] and spent three years traveling and studying in Minnesota and Philadelphia before setting up a practice in Woburn, Massachusetts[3] and joining the Massachusetts Medical Society on December 17, 1861.[4][2] In 1866 he was still running a small practice in Woburn,[5] and in his 1868 report on Gage (see below) he described himself as "from Woburn".[6]

His first paper regarding Gage appeared in Boston Medical and Surgical Journal in late 1848; a short followup note appeared early the next year. Almost twenty years later, in 1868, he published a final paper recounting what he had been able to learn about the subsequent history of his patient (who died in 1860), and presenting psychological changes in Gage which, presumably, were sequelae of the accident. In one of the most memorably strange examples of dogged long-term medical followup, Harlow had even obtained Gage's skull for use in preparing the paper.[7]

Publications

Reprinted in History of Psychiatry, Vol. 4, No. 14, 274-281 (1993) doi:10.1177/0957154X9300401407 On Wikisource at: s:Recovery from the passage of an iron bar through the head

References

  1. ^ Samuel Atkins Eliot (1911). "Biographical history of Massachusetts: biographies and autobiographies of the leading men in the state, Volume 1". Massachusetts Biographical Society. http://books.google.com/books?id=1S0EAAAAYAAJ&pg=PT136#v=twopage&q&f=false. 
  2. ^ a b Malcolm Macmillan (2000). An Odd Kind of Fame: Stories of Phineas Gage. MIT Press. p. 351. ISBN 0262632594. 
  3. ^ "Harlow has taken up his residence in Woburn". Middlesex Journal. November 9, 1861. 
  4. ^ "Harlow membership to Massachusetts Medical Society". Minutes of the Middlesex East District Medical Society. December 17, 1861. 
  5. ^ John Fleischman (2004). Phineas Gage: A Gruesome But True Story about Brain Science. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. p. 56. ISBN 0618494782. 
  6. ^ Harlow, J. M. (1993). "Recovery from the passage of an iron bar through the head". History of Psychiatry 4 (14): 274–281. doi:10.1177/0957154X9300401407. 
  7. ^ John Barnard Swett. "A Descriptive Catalogue of the Warren Anatomical Museum". http://www.artandmedicine.com/biblio/authors/Jackson.html.