Hans Selye | |
|---|---|
 Selye in the 1970s | |
| Born | (1907-01-26)January 26, 1907 |
| Died | October 16, 1982(1982-10-16) (aged 75) Montreal, Quebec, Canada |
| Other names | Selye János (Hungarian) |
János Hugo Bruno "Hans"SelyeCC (/ˈsɛljeɪ/[dubious –discuss];Hungarian:Selye JánosHungarian pronunciation:[ˈʃɛjɛ]; January 26, 1907 – October 16, 1982) was a Hungarian-Canadianendocrinologist who conducted important scientific work on the hypothetical non-specific response of an organism tostressors. Although he did not recognize all of the many aspects ofglucocorticoids, Selye was aware of their role in thestress response.
Selye was born inVienna,Austria-Hungary on January 26, 1907, and grew up inKomárom (the town with Hungarian majority in present-day Slovakia was cut by theTreaty of Trianon in 1920).[1] Selye's father was a doctor of Hungarianethnicity and his mother was Austrian. He became a Doctor of Medicine and Chemistry inPrague in 1929 and went on to do pioneering work in stress and endocrinology atJohns Hopkins University,McGill University, and theUniversité de Montréal. He was nominated for theNobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the first time in 1949. Although he received a total of 17 nominations (1949–1953)[2] in his career, he never won the prize.[3][4]
Selye died on October 16, 1982, inMontreal, Quebec, Canada. He often returned to visit Hungary, giving lectures as well as interviews in Hungarian television programs. He conducted a lecture in 1973 at the Hungarian Scientific Academy in Hungarian and observers noted that he had no accent, despite spending many years abroad. His bookThe Stress of Life appeared in Hungarian asAz Életünk és a stressz in 1964 and became a bestseller.Selye János University, the onlyHungarian-languageuniversity inSlovakia, was named after him. Selye's mother was killed by gunfire duringHungary's anti-Communist revolt of 1956.
Selye's interest in stress began when he was in medical school; he had observed that patients with various chronic illnesses like tuberculosis and cancer appeared to display a common set of symptoms that he attributed to what is now commonly called stress. After completing his medical degree and a doctorate degree in organic chemistry at theGerman University of Prague, he received a Rockefeller Foundation fellowship to study (1931) at Johns Hopkins inBaltimore[5]and later moved to the Department of Biochemistry at McGill University in Montreal in 1932[6]where he studied under the sponsorship ofJames Bertram Collip (1892–1965).[7] While working with laboratory animals, Selye observed a phenomenon that he thought resembled what he had previously seen in chronic patients. Rats exposed to cold, drugs, or surgical injury exhibited a common pattern of responses to thesestressors. (A stressor is a chemical or biological agent, environmental condition, external stimulus or an event seen as causing stress to an organism.)
Selye initially (c. 1940s) called this the "general adaptation syndrome" (at the time it was also called "Selye's syndrome"), but he later rebaptized it with the simpler term"stress response". According to Selye the general adaptation syndrome is triphasic, involving an initialalarm phase followed by a stage ofresistance or adaptation and, finally, a stage ofexhaustion and death (these phases were established largely on the basis of glandular states).[8] Working with doctoral student Thomas McKeown (1912–1988), Selye published a report that used the word "stress" to describe these responses to adverse events.[9][need quotation to verify]
His last inspiration for general adaptation syndrome came from an experiment in which he injected mice with extracts of various organs. He at first believed that he had discovered a new hormone, but was proved wrong when every irritating substance he injected produced the same symptoms (swelling of theadrenal cortex, atrophy of thethymus, gastric and duodenal ulcers).[10] This, paired with his observation that people with different diseases exhibit similar symptoms, led to his description of the effects of "noxious agents" as he at first called it. He later adopted the term"stress", which has been accepted into the lexicon of many languages.[11]
Selye argued that stress differs from other physical responses in that it is identical whether the provoking impulse is positive or negative. He called negative stress"distress" and positive stress "eustress".
The system whereby the body copes with stress, thehypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis (HPA axis) system, was also first described by Selye.
Selye acknowledged the influence ofClaude Bernard (1813–1878), who developed the idea ofmilieu intérieur, and of the "homeostasis" ofWalter Cannon (1871–1945). Selye conceptualized the physiology of stress as having two components: a set of responses which he called the "general adaptation syndrome", and the development of a pathological state from ongoing, unrelieved stress.
While Selye's work attracted continued support from advocates ofpsychosomatic medicine, many in experimental physiology concluded that his concepts were too vague and unmeasurable. During the 1950s, Selye turned away from the laboratory to promote his concept through popular books and lecture tours. He wrote both for non-academic physicians and an international bestseller entitledThe Stress of Life (1956). From the late 1960s, academic psychologists started to adopt Selye's concept of stress, and he followedThe Stress of Life with two other books for the general public,From Dream to Discovery: On Being a Scientist (1964) andStress without Distress (1974). The idea of "stress" resonated withhumanistic psychology,[12]andpop psychology generalised the concept.[13]
Selye worked as a professor and director of the Institute of Experimental Medicine and Surgery at theUniversité de Montréal. In 1975 he founded the International Institute of Stress,[14]and in 1979, Selye and Arthur Antille started the Hans Selye Foundation. Later Selye and eight Nobel laureates founded the Canadian Institute of Stress.[15]
In 1968 he was made aCompanion of the Order of Canada. In 1976Concordia University awarded him the Loyola Medal.[16] In 1976, he received theAmerican Academy of Achievement's Golden Plate Award at a Banquet of the Golden Plate ceremony in San Diego, California.[17]
Although it was not widely known at the time, Selye began consulting for thetobacco industry starting in 1958; he had previously sought funding from the industry, but had been denied. Later, New York attorney Edwin Jacob contacted Selye as he prepared a defense against liability actions brought against tobacco companies. The companies wanted Selye's help in arguing that the recognized correlation between smoking and cancer was not proof of causality. The firm offered to pay Selye $1000 to make a statement supporting this claim. He agreed but refused to testify. Tobacco industry lawyers reported that Selye was willing to incorporate industry advice when writing about smoking and stress. One lawyer advised him to "comment on the unlikelihood of there being a mechanism by which smoking could cause cardiovascular disease” and to emphasize the "stressful" effect that anti-smoking messages had on the US population.[18]
Publicly, Selye never declared his consultancy work for the tobacco industry. In a 1967 letter to "Medical Opinion and Review", he argued against government over-regulation of science and public health, implying that his views on smoking were objective: "I purposely avoided any mention of government-supported research because, being too largely dependent upon it, I may not be able to view the subject objectively. However, I do not use … cigarettes so let these examples suffice." In June 1969, Selye (then director of the Institute of Experimental Pathology, University of Montreal) testified before theCanadian House of Commons Health Committee against anti-smoking legislation, opposing advertising restrictions, health warnings, and restrictions on tar and nicotine. For his testimony Selye was funded $50,000 per year for a 3-year "special project", by William Thomas Hoyt, executive ofCouncil for Tobacco Research, with another $50,000 a year pledged by the Canadian tobacco industry. His comments on smoking were used worldwide;Philip Morris used Selye's statements on the benefits of smoking to argue against the use of health warnings on tobacco products inSweden. Similarly, in 1977 the Australian Cigarette Manufacturers quoted Selye extensively in their submission to theAustralian Senate Standing Committee on Social Welfare.[18]
In 1999, theUnited States Department of Justice brought ananti-racketeering case against 7 tobacco companies –British American Tobacco,Brown & Williamson, Philip Morris,Liggett,American Tobacco Company,RJ Reynolds, andLorillard– plus the Council for Tobacco Research, and theTobacco Institute. As a result, the industry's influence on stress research was revealed.[18]
Because of his obvious talent, Selye received a Rockefeller scholarship to study at Johns Hopkins University. He arrived in Baltimore in 1931 [...].
Born in Vienna in 1907, Selye trained in Prague, Paris, Rome, and Baltimore before coming to McGill in 1932 [...].
The development of psychological approaches to stress sit within a wider context of the growth of humanistic psychology [...].
Although Selye's formulation of the stress concept and its subsequent redefinitions within medicine and psychology were based around specific, diagnostic explanations, popular understanding is, by its nature, always more general [...].
Selye founded the International Institute for Stress in Canada.
