I'm guessing you're talking about Phineas Gage. Watched a documentary about him, a couple of years back. Was quite interesting, and if anyone is interested, there's a lot of vids on Youtube about him. Overall, he was extremely lucky, even more that he didn't die of infection considering the time, but did end up with a personality change/ie. Brain damage. 
Frontal lobe damage....... happens to quite a few serial killers, like Fred West and Bobby Joe Long.