Hans Selye is the person most people consider to be “The Father of Stress”. His research and discoveries had a huge influence on the scientific community and public understanding of diseases and their causes. From observations to intentional experimentation in his lab, Selye paved the way in the human understanding of stress and how the body reacts to it.
Hans Selye was born on January 26th, 1907, in Vienna, Austria-Hungry (now just known as Austria) (Hans Selye par. 2). Hans grew up in Komárom, Hungary, which is now known as Komarno, in Slovakia (Hans Selye par. 2) (Rosch par. 2). Hans parents were Hugo Selye and Maria Felicitas Selye (SMJ par. 2). Hugo Selye worked for a while as a surgeon with the rank of Colonel in the Austro-Hungarian Imperial Army, and afterwards created his how surgical clinic (SMJ par. 2). Maria Felicitas Selye worked as the administrator for her husband’s clinic, and consistently strove for excellence and intellectual sophistication (SMJ par. 2). Hans attended school at a Benedictine Monastery through his childhood, as well as receiving tutoring (Rosch par. 2). As a young child Hans Selye was a confident and boastful person, which continued into his adulthood (SMJ par. 3).
Hans attended the German Medical School in Prague when he was 17 (Rosch par. 2). Hans Selye carried on his family’s tradition of medicine, which had been going for 4 generations before him (Rosch par. 2). Hans completed his medical degree and got a doctorate in Organic Chemistry at the German Medical School in Prague (Hans Selye par. 4). Selye received a Rockefeller Foundation fellowship, which made it so he was able to study more at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore (Hans Selye par. 4). A few years later Hans transferred to the Department of Biochemistry at McGill University with the sponsorship of James Bertram Collip (Hans Selye par. 4). While still a medical student, Hans noticed during rounds that patients with different chronic illnesses and issues all displayed some symptoms that were the same (Rosch par. 2).
Professor Collip (the man sponsoring Hans) assigned Hans to identify different female sex hormones that were, as of then, undiscovered (SMJ par. 6). In an attempt to do this, Hans would collect cows’ ovaries for processing and examination (SMJ par. 6). He would then inject various extracts from the ovaries into female rats to observe changes (SMJ par. 6). During the autopsies Hans began to notice that the rats had the same reactions to different noxious agents (SMJ par. 6). After making these observations Hans decided to go further down this rout of experimentation and began to put the female rats into different environmental situations to see how they reacted (SMJ par. 6). Hans noticed that the rats were having the same symptoms, just like the different human patients were having the same symptoms (Hans Selye par. 4). Selye began to notice a pattern of phases, which he called the General Adaption Syndrome (Hans Selye par. 4). The phases Hans noticed were an initial phase of alarm, a stage of resistance or adaptation, and the final phase of exhaustion and death (Hans Selye par. 4). “The syndrome details how stress induces hormonal automatic responses and, over time, these hormonal changes can lead to ulcers, high blood pressure, arteriosclerosis, arthritis, kidney disease, and allergic reactions” (Rosch par. 2).
Hans Selye first used the word stress to describe the responses in a report published, written with the help of doctoral student Thomas McKeown (Hans Selye par. 4). As the word stress caught on, Hans had to create a whole other word, stressor, to differentiate between the cause (stressors) and the result (stress) (Rosch par. 8). Selye also had to differentiate between negative stress and positive stress, calling the negative distress and the positive eustress (Hans Selye par. 7). Most other languages did not have a word similar or equivalent to stress, and had to add the word to their vocabulary, examples from European languages being le stress, el stress, il stress, lo stress, and der stress (Rosch par. 6). “Stress is one of the very few words that are preserved in English in languages that do not use the Roman alphabet” (Rosch par. 6). After the word stress was what most everyone was calling the concept, Hans discovered that his choice of the word stress was rather “unfortunate” (Rosch par. 5). “Selye several times complained to me that had his knowledge of English been more precise, he would have gone down in history as the father of the ‘strain’ concept” (Rosch par.5).
Hans Selye’s personal life was, unfortunately, more of a mess. He was married 3 times (SMJ par. 8). He had a daughter with his first wife (SMJ par. 8). With his second wife he had 8 kids, and decided to stay in the marriage for 28 years because he wanted to provide a stable environment for his kids until they were independent (SMJ par. 8). Selye married his laboratory assistant (who had been his assistant for 19 years) in his third marriage (SMJ par. 8). Hans felt that Louise (his third wife) had always understood his goals and that they were on the same page (SMJ par. 8). “Selye compared himself to a racehorse with Louise riding on his back, racing together toward the finishing line” (SMJ par.8). Hans Selye wrote around 40 books and over 1600 publications (SMJ par. 9). Hans died on October 16, 1982 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, at the age of 75 (SMJ par. 10). Unfortunately, after his death, it was discovered that Hans was essentially being bribed by the tobacco industry to defend smoking (Hans Selye par. 9). Originally, Selye had approached the tobacco company asking for funding for his research and was turned down (Hans Selye par. 9). Some time later a New York attorney, Edwin Jacob, approached Hans with an offer: the firm would pay Selye $1000 if he made a statement supporting the claim that the correlation between cancer and smoking was not proof of causality (Hans Selye par. 9). Hans agreed to take the offer (Hans Selye par. 9). In June of 1969, Hans Selye testified before the Canadian House of Commons Health Committee against antismoking laws, advertising restrictions, health warnings, and restrictions on nicotine and tar (Hans Selye par. 10). For his testimony Selye was funded $50K a year for three years by the CTR executive William Hart (Hans Selye par. 10). The Canadian tobacco industry also pledged to give $50k a year (Hans Selye par. 10). Hans Selye’s testimony was used throughout the world to defend smoking and fight against antismoking laws (Hans Selye par. 10). The United States Department of Justice, in 1999, brought antiracketeering charges against the CTR, 7 tobacco companies, and the Tobacco Institute (Hans Selye par. 10). As a result of the charges, the influence of the tobacco industry on the research of stress (Hans Selye par. 10).
Hans Selye had a major influence on the scientific community and public’s views on stress. Starting out in Europe following his family’s tradition of medicine, Hans went on to conduct unprecedented experiments and make new discoveries. His work helped humanity understand stress and its effects on the body. It gave scientists and researchers a very good platform to work off of. Although Selye made a lot of mistakes, and tarnished his record by letting himself be bribed to support smoking, he still is and will forever be remembered as “The Father of Stress.”
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