Selye found that test animals could only maintain the State of Resistance for so long. If exposure
to the stressor continued, in time, the SR gave way to the State of Exhaustion (SE). Selye defined
the SE as “The sum of all the non?specific reactions which develop as a result of prolonged over exposure to
stimuli to which adaptation has been developed but could no longer be sustained.” (5) In the SE, organ
damage first seen in the AR reappeared. (1, 2) Selye observed that if exposure to the stressor
continued in an unending manner, the SE terminated in disease and death of the test animals.