Best of Boston

There’s no question which exhibit reigns supreme here: It’s the skull of Phineas Gage, the 19th-century railroad foreman immortalized in the annals of neuroscience. After his frontal lobe was impaled by an iron rod during a fiery 1848 construction snafu, Gage was able to keep walking and talking—but his personality was transformed, effectively ending his career. He later found work as a curiosity at P. T. Barnum’s American Museum; here, his legend lives on.