Today it is not difficult to determine whether a woman is pregnant or not. It is enough to go to the pharmacy, buy a test strip and spend literally a few minutes of time. These tools appeared in wide access back in 1978, however, then it took 2 hours to get the result, and the reliability of the tests was only 20%. But earlier, with the definition of pregnancy, everything was much more complicated. That means our ancestors resorted to different yet bizarre methods to detect pregnancy.
Wheat barley test
One of the earliest pregnancy tests, if not the very first, appeared in ancient Egypt. In 1350 BC, women were advised to urinate on wheat and barley grains for several days. If wheat germinated, it meant that a woman should wait for a girl, and if barley was sprouting, then a boy. If nothing germinated, then the woman was not pregnant. Most interestingly, this test actually worked: in 1963, scientists conducted an experiment and found that in 70% of cases, the urine of pregnant women can force the seeds to germinate, and the urine of non-pregnant women or men did not lead to such an effect.
Onion test
While the ancient Egyptians checked whether a woman was pregnant with wheat and barley, the ancient Greeks used for this purpose … onions. Hippocrates, who today is considered the founder of medicine, proposed the following test: a woman who wanted to be tested for pregnancy had to insert an onion or other strong-smelling vegetable into her vagina at night. If her breath smelled of onions the next morning, then she was not pregnant. This was based on the idea that if a woman’s womb is open, the smell of onions will penetrate to her mouth like a wind tunnel.
Prophets of urine
In the 16th century, European “prophets of urine” claimed that they could tell if a woman was pregnant by the color and other characteristics of her urine. Some also mixed urine with wine and watched the result (interestingly, alcohol can actually react to proteins present in the urine of a pregnant woman). Also, these “prophets” determined by urine not only pregnancy, but also the diseases that their patient suffered from.
Rabbit test
In 20th century there was a very unpleasant way of determining pregnancy, which ended tragically for rabbits, mice and rats. In the 1920s, two German scientists, Selmar Aschheim and Bernhard Sondek, found a certain hormone in the urine of pregnant women is associated with ovarian growth (known as chorionic gonadotropin). The pregnant woman’s urine was injected into immature rabbits, rats, or mice to induce their ovaries to develop. On the fifth day after the injection, the animal was killed and dissected to see the result.
Heck test
A medical treatise from the late 15th century said: “If you want to know if a woman is pregnant, you need to ask her to urinate in a basin, and then put a latch or key in that basin for three to four hours. After that, you need to drain the urine, remove the latch and see if there is an imprint from it on the bottom of the pelvis. If so, the woman is pregnant.
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