Selye

Endocrinologist Dr. Hans Selye became internationally known for conceptualizing and proving through research that stress, for better or for worse, is a constant influence in our day-to-day existence. His abiding interest in this subject began in his early years as a medical student in the University of Prague. Born into a wealthyand cultured family, Selye chose a career in medical research rather than taking over his father’s lucrative surgical practice.

Writing many years later Selye reported that in his early, formative years he was “still capable of looking at patients withoutbeing biased by current medical thought.” He wondered why physicians, since the dawn of medical history, had concentratedtheir efforts on the recognition of individual diseases and the discovery of specific remedies for those diseases “without givingany attention to the much more obvious ‘syndrome of just being sick’.” Undeterred when professors discouraged him, Selye,with great confidence in his own abilities, persevered.

Describing a syndrome as “a group of signs and symptoms that occur together and characterize a disease,” Selye set out toanalyze how the “general syndrome of being sick” characterized diseases generally. The search for understanding andapplication of knowledge concerning this syndrome became the central feature of Selye’s entire academic and scientific career.

After completion of his academic and professional studies in Prague, Paris, and Rome, he received a Rockefeller ResearchFellowship and accepted a position at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. In 1932, he was appointed AssociateProfessor of Histology (the microscopic, scientific study of organic tissue) at Montreal’s McGill University. By 1945 he hadbecome the first Director of the Institute of Experimental Medicine and Surgery at the University of Montreal. He served in thatposition until his retirement in 1976. Subsequently he established the International Institute of Stress.

As he developed his theories and ideas on stress, Selye came to the conclusion that what he originally had described as “theGeneral Adaptation Syndrome” (G.A.S.) should have been called the “strain syndrome.” He recognized that strain, or stress,plays a very significant role in the development of all types of disease. In his view, stress is the non-specific response of a humanbody to any demand made upon it. Selye called the process whereby strain influences the body the General AdaptationSyndrome. He concluded that there are three distinctive phases in this process — alarm, resistance, and exhaustion.

Over a lifetime of medical research, Dr. Hans Selye proved that our daily lives are influenced by two different kinds of stress: pleasant stress contributing to “wellness” and unpleasant stress contributing to disease and sickness [The Toronto Star]

Selye included, among other diseases, high blood pressure, gastric and duodenal ulcers, and various types of mental disordersas “diseases of adaptation.” Through his presentation of these and related ideas, he stimulated much discussion and controversy.He played an indirect though major role in the stimulation of ideas concerning the sources of “wellness” as well as of “sickness.”He wrote of two types of stress: pleasant stress contributing to human well-being; unpleasant stress contributing to disease.

Selye was a highly disciplined and creative scientist, teacher, and writer. Universities around the world conferred honorarydegrees upon him. He was appointed a Companion of the Order of Canada, Canada’s highest award for exceptional service.The author of 26 books and hundreds of scientific papers, he sought to convey his ideas in terms understandable tonon-specialists. His autobiography, The Stress Of My Life first published in 1977 and reprinted in 1979, presents to the generalpublic not only his scientific work but also his philosophic views.