observed it in patients with such diverse health problems as infections, cancer, and heart disease. He noted that the syndrome probably represented an expression of a generalized “call to arms” of the body’s defensive forces in reaction to excessive demands or provocative stimuli. Selye (1936) called this nonspecific response to damage of any kind stress. Later, he used the term stressor to designate the stimulus that provoked the stress response (Selye, 1976b). To derive a conceptualization of stress, Selye (1974) chose to delineate what it was not. He wrote that stress is not