Barely more than twenty years ago the inquiry into the nature and implications of the psychophysiologic stress response seemed to be restricted to laboratory animals. Today, however, scientists from a wide range of disciplines are studying stress and its implications for human health and disease. This may be because our technical ability actually to measure the phenomenon has increased, as has our understanding of human psychophysiology. Just as important, how ever, may be the fact that we have entered a new era of disease. According to Kenneth Pelletier, we have entered upon an era in which...