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A question as old as humankind: "Am I pregnant?" Well, answering that question with a reasonable degree of accuracy proved to be difficult in the past. Before the invention of the modern-day pregnancy test, the most reliable test was just to wait and see! And while signs, such as morning sickness and missing periods, were and are common indications, people still wanted to know as early as possible.
So, how did they do it? Well, these strange methods often come back to pee! Click on to find out exactly what we mean.
One of the earliest home pregnancy tests came from ancient Egypt. Back then, potentially pregnant women were advised to urinate on wheat and barley seeds over the course of several days.
If the wheat sprouted, they were having a girl. If the barley sprouted, it was a boy. If neither sprouted, they weren’t pregnant.
Strangely enough, researchers in 1963 tested this method and found there was some grain of truth! About 70% of the time, the urine of pregnant people would cause the seeds to sprout, while the urine of non-pregnant people did not.
In ancient Greece, Hippocrates suggested that a woman who suspected she might be pregnant insert an onion or other strong-smelling bulbous vegetable into her vagina overnight.
If the woman's breath smelled of onions the next morning, she wasn't pregnant. This was based on the idea that if the womb was open, without a fetus, the onion scent would be sent up to the mouth.
Another test suggested by Hippocrates was for a woman to drink a mixture of honey and water before bedtime.
He believed that if a woman drank this mixture and experienced bloating and cramps during the night, she was pregnant.
Dating back to the 15th century, in this method women were asked to pee in a basin where a latch or key was dropped. They would leave the item in urine for three or four hours.
The urine would then be thrown away and the item removed. If the latch or key left an impression on the basin, the woman was pregnant. If not, she wasn't.
During the 16th century in Europe, "p i s s prophets" would determine whether a person was with child by the color and characteristics of their urine.
Some also mixed urine with wine and observed the results. It was a test that might have seen some success, given that alcohol can react to proteins present in a pregnant woman's urine.
One 16th-century physician, Jacques Guillemeau, claimed you could tell by a person’s eyes whether they were pregnant.
Guillemeau claimed that as early as the second month a pregnant woman got deep-set eyes with small pupils, drooping lids, and swollen veins in the corner of her eyes.
Early on in pregnancy, at about six to eight weeks, the cervix, labia, and vagina can take on a dark bluish or purple-red hue. This is due to the increased blood flow to the area.
This indication of pregnancy was first noticed in 1836 by a French physician. It later became known as Chadwick’s sign, after James Read Chadwick, an obstetrics doctor who brought the discovery to the American Gynecological Society in 1886.
Another method involving pee, in this test one had to urinate in a glass and pour two drops of oil into it.
If the drops attracted each other and merged into a single zone, it meant that the woman was pregnant. If the drops remained separate, then the test was negative.
Another bizarre pregnancy test, here the woman had to drink the breastmilk of a mother who had birthed a son.
If she puked after that, her pregnancy was confirmed. However, there's no scientific evidence to support this claim.
The toothpaste pregnancy test involves putting a few drops of urine on some white toothpaste.
After stirring the mixture, the person watches for any foaming or color change, which supposedly indicates a positive result. However, this also isn't a reliable method.
During the 17th century, some doctors would dip a ribbon into a pot of a woman's urine to see if she was possibly pregnant.
If the smell of the ribbon made the woman gag or feel nauseous, she was presumed pregnant.
In the 1920s, German scientists Selmar Aschheim and Bernhard Zondek were able to identify a hormone, human chorionic gonadotropin or hCG. Found only in pregnant women, it was the first time a single compound was discovered that could indicate pregnancy status.
Known as the rabbit test, to determine the presence of hCG a sample of the woman's urine was injected into an immature female mouse or rabbit. If hCG was present in the urine sample, the animal would go into heat, indicating the woman was pregnant. This proved to be 98% accurate.
Though it worked off the same principle as the rabbit test, this one was actually a bit better. Plus, the animal remained alive at the end of it.
By the late '40s, scientists had determined that when a pregnant woman's urine was injected into a live toad or frog, they produced eggs within 24 hours.
Finally, modern pregnancy tests began being developed during the '60s. Today, these are easy to use, and they're about 99% effective when used correctly.
Sources: (Live Science) (Mental Floss)
The rabbit test and other bizarre methods of detecting pregnancies from history
Before there were home pregnancy tests
LIFESTYLE Pregnancy
A question as old as humankind: "Am I pregnant?" Well, answering that question with a reasonable degree of accuracy proved to be difficult in the past. Before the invention of the modern-day pregnancy test, the most reliable test was just to wait and see! And while signs, such as morning sickness and missing periods, were and are common indications, people still wanted to know as early as possible.
So, how did they do it? Well, these strange methods often come back to pee! Click on to find out exactly what we mean.