Random Facts & Useless Knowledge

No rabbits, mice or frogs died or were harmed in the writing of this blog. This was not always the case in pregnancy tests. In fact, the history of pregnancy tests involves barley, wheat, wine, urine and sacrificial mice, rabbits and frogs. Sounds like a bad party.

It all started in ancient Egypt. An Egyptian woman would urinate on wheat and barley seeds to determine if she was pregnant. If barley seeds germinated, paint the room blue, while germinating wheat would bring out the pink. I assume no one ate the bread.

The Middle Ages would have some lucky person mix a woman’s urine with wine and study the urine for smell, clarity, consistency and taste. What a hang over! I’m sure people were lining up for that job.

Things were a little fuzzy from this point on, but in the 20th century some genius discovered the human chorionic gonadotropin hormone. Since no one could say that, they called it hCG for short. Significant amounts of hCG were found in pregnant women, so a test could be developed that would react with this hormone.

During a late night in a lab after some wine chasers, someone thought that injecting urine from a pregnant woman with this hcg into young rabbits, mice or frogs would be a good idea, since that would determine if a woman was pregnant or not. The unfortunate by-product of this was that the rabbit, mouse or frog would have to be sacrificed to see if the hCG would stimulate the animals ovaries.

After protests from the forest animals, new tests were developed that would allow a urine sample to be mailed off to a lab to determine pregnancy. Today, testing is often accomplished with a home pregnancy test.

It is now safe to eat the bread, drink the wine, and watch the animals frolic in the forest.