Chemical hormesis: its historical foundations as a biological hypothesis

Despite the long history of hormesis-related experimental research no syste matic effort to describe its early history has been undertaken. The present paper attempts to reconstruct and assess the early history of such researc h and to evaluate how advances in related scientific fields affected the co urse of hormesis-related research. The purpose of this paper is not only to satisfy this gap in current knowledge, but also to provide a foundation fo r the assessment of how the concept of hermetic dose-response relationships may have affected the nature of the bioassay especially with respect to ha zard assessment practices within a modern risk assessment framework.