Hans Selye

Hans Selye

CC

Selye in the 1970s

January 26, 1907
Born
Vienna, Austria-Hungary
October 16, 1982 (aged 75)
Died
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Other names Selye János (Hungarian)
Scientific career
Influenced Marshall McLuhan[1]

János Hugo Bruno "Hans" Selye CC (/ˈsɛljeɪ/[dubious – discuss]; Hungarian: Selye János; January 26, 1907 – October
16, 1982) was a pioneering Hungarian-Canadian endocrinologist who conducted important scientific work on
the hypothetical non-specific response of an organism to stressors. Although he did not recognize all of the
many aspects of glucocorticoids, Selye was aware of their role in the stress response. Charlotte Gerson[2]
considers him the first to demonstrate the existence of biological stress.[need quotation to verify]

Contents
 1 Biography
 2 Stress research
 3 Controversy and involvement with the tobacco industry
 4 Former graduate students
 5 Publications
 6 See also
 7 References
 8 External links
Biography
Selye was born in Vienna, Austria-Hungary on January 26, 1907 and grew up in Komárom (the town with
Hungarian majority in present day Slovakia was cut by the Treaty of Trianon in 1920).[3] Selye's father was a
doctor of Hungarian ethnicity and his mother was Austrian. He became a Doctor of Medicine and Chemistry in
Prague in 1929 and went on to do pioneering work in stress and endocrinology at Johns Hopkins University,
McGill University, and the Université de Montréal. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Physiology or
Medicine for the first time in 1949. Although he received a total of 17 nominations in his career, he never won
the prize.[4][5]

Selye died on October 16, 1982 in Montreal, 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 book The Stress of Life appeared in Hungarian as Az Életünk és a stressz in 1964 and became
a bestseller. Selye János University, the only Hungarian-language university in Slovakia, was named after him.
Selye's mother was killed by gunfire during Hungary's anti-Communist revolt of 1956.

Stress research

Bust of Hans Selye at Selye János University, Komárno, Slovakia

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 the German University of Prague, he received a Rockefeller Foundation fellowship to study at
Johns Hopkins in Baltimore and later moved to the Department of Biochemistry at McGill University in
Montreal where he studied under the sponsorship of James Bertram Collip.[6] 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 these
stressors. (A stressor is a chemical or biological agent, environmental condition, external stimulus or an event
seen as causing stress to an organism.)
Selye initially (circa 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 initial alarm phase followed by a stage of resistance or
adaptation and, finally, a stage of exhaustion and death (these phases were established largely on the basis of
glandular states).[7] Working with doctoral student Thomas McKeown (1912–1988), Selye published a report
that used the word “stress” to describe these responses to adverse events.[8]

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 he had discovered a new hormone, but was proved wrong when
every irritating substance he injected produced the same symptoms (swelling of the adrenal cortex, atrophy of
the thymus, gastric and duodenal ulcers).[9] 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
coined the term "stress", which has been accepted into the lexicon of most other languages.[10]

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, the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis (HPA axis) system,
was also first described by Selye.

Selye has acknowledged the influence of Claude Bernard (who developed the idea of milieu intérieur) and
Walter Cannon's "homeostasis". 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 the work attracted continued support from advocates of psychosomatic 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 for both non-
academic physicians and, in an international bestseller entitled The Stress of Life (1956). From the late 1960s,
academic psychologists started to adopt Selye's concept of stress, and he followed The Stress of Life with two
other books for the general public, From Dream to Discovery: On Being a Scientist (1964) and Stress without
Distress (1974).

He worked as a professor and director of the Institute of Experimental Medicine and Surgery at the Université
de Montréal. In 1975 he created the International Institute of Stress, and in 1979, Selye and Arthur Antille
started the Hans Selye Foundation. Later Selye and eight Nobel laureates founded the Canadian Institute of
Stress.[11]

In 1968 he was made a Companion of the Order of Canada. In 1976, he was awarded the Loyola Medal by
Concordia University.[12] In 1976, he received the American Academy of Achievement’s Golden Plate Award at
a Banquet of the Golden Plate ceremony in San Diego, California.[13]

Controversy and involvement with the tobacco industry

Although it was not widely known at the time, Selye began consulting for the tobacco 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.[14]

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 the Canadian 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 of Council 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 in
Sweden. Similarly, in 1977 the Australian Cigarette Manufacturers quoted Selye extensively in their submission
to the Australian Senate Standing Committee on Social Welfare.[14]

In 1999, the United States Department of Justice brought an anti-racketeering case against 7 tobacco companies
–British American Tobacco, Brown & Williamson, Philip Morris, Liggett, American Tobacco Company, RJ
Reynolds, and Lorillard– plus the Council for Tobacco Research, and the Tobacco Institute. As a result, the
industry's influence on stress research was revealed.[14]

Former graduate students

 Roger Guillemin
 Paola S. Timiras

Publications
 "A Syndrome Produced by Diverse Nocuous Agents" - 1936 article by Hans Selye from The journal of
neuropsychiatry and clinical neurosciences
 The Stress of Life. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1956, ISBN 978-0070562127
 Selye, H. (Oct 7, 1955). "Stress and disease". Science. 122 (3171): 625–631.
Bibcode:1955Sci...122..625S. doi:10.1126/science.122.3171.625. PMID 13255902.
 From Dream to Discovery: On being a scientist. New York: McGraw-Hill 1964, ISBN 978-0405066160
 Hormones and Resistance. Berlin; New York: Springer-Verlag, 1971, ISBN 978-3540054115
 Stress Without Distress. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Co., c1974, ISBN 978-0397010264

See also
 Science and technology in Canada
 Alvin Toffler

References
1.

 Kroker, Arthur (1984). Technology and the Canadian Mind: Innis/McLuhan/Grant. Montreal: New World
Perspectives. p. 73. hdl:1828/7129. ISBN 978-0-920393-14-7.
  Healing the Gerson Way, Defeating Cancer and Other Chronic Diseases, New Edition. Charlotte Gerson
with Beata Bishop, Gerson Health Media, 2010, p. 48.
  "Hans Selye". Encyclopædia Britannica (2008 ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. Retrieved 2008-06-
12.
  The Nomination Database for the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, 1901-1953
  "Nomination Archive". NobelPrize.org. Retrieved 2018-12-01.
  Jackson, Mark (2014), Cantor, David; Ramsden, Edmund (eds.), "Evaluating the Role of Hans Selye in
the Modern History of Stress", Stress, Shock, and Adaptation in the Twentieth Century, Open Access
Monographs and Book Chapters Funded by Wellcome Trust, University of Rochester Press,
ISBN 9781580464765, PMID  26962615, retrieved 2018-12-02
  "Dr. Hans Selye | Canadian Medical Hall of Fame". www.cdnmedhall.org. Retrieved 2018-12-02.
  Koops, Matthias (2010), "Historical Account of the Substances Which have been Used to Describe
Events, and to Convey Ideas, from the Earliest Date, to the Invention of Paper", Historical Account of the
Substances Which Have Been Used to Describe Events, and to Convey Ideas, from the Earliest Date, to the
Invention of Paper, Cambridge University Press, pp. 7–258, doi:10.1017/cbo9780511694530.002,
hdl:2027/gri.ark:/13960/t04x8wd2g, ISBN 9780511694530
  Hans Selye, "The General Adaptation Syndrome and the Diseases of Adaptation" (two parts), Journal of
Allergy [later and Clinical Immunology] 17/4 (July 1946): 231–247; and 17/6 (Nov. 1946): 358-98. Available
online at https://doi.org/10.1016/0021-8707(46)90148-7 and (conclusion)
https://www.jacionline.org/article/0021-8707(46)90159-1/pdf
  Selye, Hans (1956). The Stress of Life. New York: McGraw-Hill. Discussed in Mark Jackson, "The
Pursuit of Happiness: The Social and Scientific Origins of Hans Selye's Natural Philosophy of Life", History of
the Human Sciences 25/2 (Dec. 2012): 13-29. https://doi.org/10.1177/0952695112468526 and, with reference to
use/translation of the term stress into many languages, Russell Viner, "Putting Stress in Life: Hans Selye and
the Making of Stress Theory", Social Studies of Science 29/3 (June 1999): 391-410. Online at
https://www.jstor.org/stable/285410
  "Welcome To The Canadian Institute Of Stress". Stresscanada.org. Retrieved 2010-06-13.
  "Hans Selye". www.concordia.ca. Retrieved 2017-08-17.
  "Golden Plate Awardees of the American Academy of Achievement". www.achievement.org. American
Academy of Achievement.

14.  Petticrew, Mark P.; Lee, Kelley (March 2011). "The "Father of Stress" Meets "Big Tobacco": Hans
Selye and the Tobacco Industry". American Journal of Public Health. 101 (3): 411–418.
doi:10.2105/AJPH.2009.177634. ISSN 0090-0036. PMC 3036703. PMID 20466961.

External links
 Mementos and photos
 Stress, by Hans Selye, National Film Board


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Categories:

 1907 births
 1982 deaths
 Scientists from Vienna
 20th-century Austrian physicians
 Canadian endocrinologists
 Companions of the Order of Canada
 Persons of National Historic Significance (Canada)
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 Hungarian emigrants to Canada
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 Université de Montréal faculty
 20th-century Canadian physicians