Stress of Life: From Molecules to Man (Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences)

Well into the twentieth century, the scientific study of disease emphasized "specificity"--that is, those characteristics that defined a given disease by distinguishing it from others. But in the 1930s a young Hungarian medical student named Hans Seyle noticed that patients with different diseases often exhibited identical symptoms. They just "looked sick." Investigating this phenomenon in the course of his distinguished career, Seyle gave it a name that became a household word--stress. Seyle published his findings in a variety of scientific and popular venues, including his best-selling book, The Stress of Life.

The contributors to the present volume--including eleven recipients of the award given in Seyle's honor--represent a wide variety of scientific disciplines, from chemistry and molecular biology to psychology and dentistry. Topics include heat-shock proteins; expression of heat-shock proteins; stress response in prokaryotes and eukaryotes; plant stress; environmental stress; physiological mediators of stress response; stress of infections; stress and aging; and psychosocial stress.