Evolution of the Stress Concept

Abstract

Modern conceptions of health and disease can be traced back to early Chinese, Indian, Egyptian, and Greek civilizations. Galen of Pergamon, a Greek physician who practiced medicine for most of his career in Rome, had an enduring impact on the medical sciences for almost 15 centuries with his writings on the balance among the four humors: black bile, yellow bile, blood, and phlegm. At the end of the 19th century, Claude Bernard in Paris wrote about the importance of the constancy of the internal environment. In the early 20th century, Walter Cannon introduced the concept of homeostasis and studied the emergency function of the adrenal medulla. Hans Selye is credited with popularizing the concept of stress, and he introduced the concept of the general adaptation syndrome. More recent additions to the nomenclature on stress include allostasis, or stability through change, and allostatic load, which relates to a failure to adapt to chronic stressors.