Home maternity tests became widely availablein 1978 , although they accept two hour to develop and were precise for disconfirming outcome only 80 percent of the time . now , they can supposedly distinguish as early as five days before a person ’s miss period . Home maternity tests work by detecting trace levels of thepregnancy hormonehuman chorionic gonadotropic hormone ( hCG ) in urine ; hCG is present after ball implantation , which occurs six to 12 day after fecundation , and is secreted by the cells that are beginning to shape the placenta .
Before the invention of this miraculous equipment , the most true test was just to wait and see . But while it might be a decent surprise to find out you ’re pregnant the old - fashioned way — disgorgement , pretermit period , have a baby — people still wanted to know as ahead of time as potential whether they were harboring a tiny human being .
So how ’d they do it ? Weirdly enough , it often comes back to pee .
1. The Wheat and Barley Test
One of the earliest , if not the earliest , house pregnancy trial run came from ancient Egypt . In 1350 BCE , potentially pregnant people were advised to pass water on wheat berry and barleycorn seeds over the course of several twenty-four hour period ; if the pale yellow sprouted , they were accept a female child , and if the barleycorn sprouted , a boy . If neither sprouted , they were n’t fraught . The most interesting thing about this psychometric test was that it actually worked : In 1963 , a laboratory experimented with the wheat and barley test and establish that70 percentof the time , the urine of pregnant people would cause the seed to sprout , while the urine of non - fraught people did not .
2. The Onion Test
While the ancient Egyptians were on to something with the wheat berry and barley test , they and the ancient Greeks seem to have had a fuzzy understanding of anatomy . Both Egyptian aesculapian papyri and Hippocrates , lauded as the father of medication , suggest that a mortal who suspected they might be pregnantinsert an onionor other strong - smelling protuberant veggie into their vagina overnight . If the person ’s breath smelled of onions the next morning , they were n’t pregnant ; this was ground on the idea that if the womb was open , and wafting the oniony scent up to the sass like a wind tunnel , there was no foetus . If the person were pregnant , then the uterus would be closed , so no wind burrow .
3. The Latch Test
FromThe Distaff Gospels , a collection of adult female ’s medical traditional knowledge written in the previous 15th century : “ My friend , if you require to know if a woman is pregnant , you must ask her to pee in a basin and then put a latch or a key fruit in it , but it is respectable to apply a latch — exit this latch in the basin with the urine for three or four hours . Then make the urine away and remove the latch . If you see the impression of the latch on the drainage area , be sure that the woman is pregnant . If not , she is not pregnant . ” Say what now ?
4. Piss Prophets
As bizarre as the “ latch trial run ” sounds , it still recognized that something in a meaning person ’s pee was different than non - pregnant urine , a fact that sixteenth - century European “ piss oracle ” also recognized . These so - call experts claimed they could determine whether or not a person was with child by the vividness and feature of their urine . Some also mixed urine with wine-colored and observe the effect , a test that might have seen some success , given that inebriant can react to proteins present in a pregnant person ’s pee . Of course , these piss vaticinator did n’t limit their fortune telling to fraught people ; they could also , by study urine , intuit whether the pee ’s owner was stick out from any sickness or disease .
5. Look for Changes in the Eye
One 16th - one C medico , Jacques Guillemeau , take you could separate by a person ’s heart whether they were significant . Guillemeau , writer of an influential treatise on ophthalmology , claimed that as early as the second calendar month , “ a pregnant womanhood gets deep - set eyes with small pupils , drooping lids and swollen lilliputian nervure in the nook of the eye . ” That is likely not on-key , but he was right about one affair : Eyes can changeduring pregnancy , affect your vision . This is why it ’s not a upright idea to get fresh middleman or prescription glassful during gestation .
6. Chadwick’s Sign
betimes on in pregnancy , at more or less six to eight week , the cervix , labia , and vagina can take on a dark bluish or majestic - ruby chromaticity , owing to the increase line of descent stream to the area . This remarkable indication of pregnancy was first noticed in 1836 by a French physician . It later became known asChadwick ’s sign of the zodiac , after James Read Chadwick , an tocology Dr. who brought the discovery up at a merging of the American Gynecological Society in 1886 .
7. The Rabbit Test
away from data-based tests such as Chadwick ’s sign , maternity test were still an unpleasant crapshoot until the 20th century . probe into hormones , the large thing in science at the turn of the century , just made maternity testing unpleasant for a bunch of cony , mice , and blabber .
In the 1920s , two German scientist , Selmar Aschheim and Bernhard Zondek , determined that there was a specific hormone present in the weewee of pregnant people that seemed to be link up to ovary growth ; we now know it as human chorionic gonadotrophin , or hCG . They figured this out byinjecting the urineof pregnant citizenry into sexually immature rabbits , rats , and mouse , which would induce ovarian development . Most of the time , the pregnant mortal ’s pee would get protrude batch on the animals ’ ovary , a sure indication of the mien of hCG . So , the Rabbit Test was born .
accord to a contemporary medical diary , it worked like this : A sample of water was injected into a chemical group of young female mice over a period of five days . On the 5th day , the mice were kill and autopsied to examine the state of their ovary . If their reproductive bit looked aroused , the examination was cocksure . If you desire your results in less than five 24-hour interval , they could simply use more black eye .
This methodran through a lot of coney , black eye , and rats ; though the phrasal idiom “ the coney died ” popularly meant that the woman was fraught , in actuality , all of the cony — and the mice and rats — died . Though medico could look at the ovary of the animal without killing it , that incline to be too much bother .
8. The Frog Test
Though it make on the same principle as the Rabbit Test , this one was actually a bit good — at leastthe animal remain aliveat the end of it . By the late 1940s , scientist had determined that when a fraught person ’s pee isinjectedinto a lively toad or frog , the unfortunate amphibian will grow bollock within 24 hr . The toad or anuran lived to see another day and , ordinarily , another test .
A version of this account primitively run in 2016 ; it has been update for 2023 .
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