Stress

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Abstract

History The originator of the theory of stress is Hans Selye, a researcher in endocrinology. He was 28 years old in 1934, doing research on rats injected with ovarian extract, and searching for a new hormone at McGill University. The injection resulted in the development of three symptoms: enlargement of the adrenal cortex, atrophy of the thymus, spleen, and lymph nodes, and deep bleeding ulcers in the lining of the stomach and duodenum. These symptoms could be increased or decreased in severity by increasing or decreasing the amount of extract. But then Selye tried the same experiment using placental extract, pituitary extract, kidney, spleen, and various other organ extracts, and finally, the toxic chemical Formalin These all produced the same symptoms! Clearly, the physical problems were not the result of the ovarian extract. It occurred to Selye that these physical problems closely resembled the symptoms of his first human patients when he was in medical school at the age of 19. Regardless of the actual ailment, they all had general symptoms that had one thing in common. The early human patients were all coping with illness and were having a nonspecific reaction of the body to damage of any kind. The rats in his experiments were being damaged and fearful of the injection of foreign substances. Doctors usually prescribed calming activities such as rest, eating easily digestible foods, and protection from wide temperature variations for their human patients and these measures usually aided recovery from almost any ailment even though they didn’t understand why these things helped.