Hans Selye wrote in the frontispiece of his book Stress, published in 1950:
To those who are under the exhausting nervous strain
of pursuing their ideal - whatever it may be - to the
martyrs who sacrifice themselves for others, as well as to those hounded by selfish ambition, fear, jealousy, and worst of all by hate. For my stress stems from the urge to help and not to judge. But most personally this book is dedicated to my wife, who helped so much to write it, for she understood that I cannot, and should not be cured of my stress but merely taught to enjoy it (Selye).
In 1978, the American Institute of Stress was formally established as a not-for-profit educational organization as a clearinghouse on stress-related topics (Rosch).
Selye first used the word ôstressö in a letter to the Editor of Nature in 1936, and the editor suggest he delete it and replace it with ôalarm reactionö because it implied nervous strain (Rosch). This created problems when his work was translated into other languages as there was no equivalent word. At a conference in France in 1946, the word ôstressö was finally born, and appeared in all languages (le stress, il stress, der stress, etc.). Selye then spent the rest of his life trying to find an acceptable definition for stress. Most people viewed stress as an unpleasant threat, so he came up with the word ôstressorö to distinguish the stimulus from the response.
As a medical student, Selye observed that patients suffering from a variety of different diseases often exhibited identical signs and symptoms (Rosch). They just ôlooked sick.ö He later described the General Adaptation Syndrome, which is a response of the body to demands placed upon it, and detailed how stress induces hormonal autonomic responses, and these, over time, can cause ulcers, high blood pressure, arteriosclerosis, arthritis, kidney disease, and allergic reactions. In 1936, he published A Syndrom...