8 Ancient Techniques for Detecting Pregnancy

Home pregnancy tests became widely available in 1978, though they took up to two hours to produce results and were only 80 percent accurate for negative results. Today, however, they can supposedly detect pregnancy as early as five days before a missed period. These tests work by detecting small amounts of the pregnancy hormone human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) in urine. This hormone is present after an egg has implanted, typically six to twelve days after fertilization, and is secreted by the cells that will eventually form the placenta.

Before this life-changing invention, the most dependable method was simply waiting for signs to appear. While it might have been a surprising and somewhat unpleasant way to discover pregnancy—through nausea, missed periods, and eventually, childbirth—people still wanted an answer as soon as possible to confirm whether they were carrying a little one.

So how did people figure it out? Strangely enough, it often came down to urine once again.

1. The Wheat and Barley Pregnancy Test

One of the earliest home pregnancy tests, possibly the very first, originated in ancient Egypt. Around 1350 BCE, people thought to be pregnant were advised to urinate on wheat and barley seeds for several days. If the wheat sprouted, it meant a girl was on the way; if barley sprouted, it indicated a boy. No sprouting? No pregnancy. Interestingly, the test had a surprising accuracy rate: A 1963 laboratory experiment revealed that 70 percent of the time, the urine of pregnant individuals caused the seeds to sprout, while urine from those who weren't pregnant did not.

2. The Onion Test

While the ancient Egyptians had a solid grasp on the wheat and barley test, their understanding of anatomy, shared by the ancient Greeks, seems a bit off. Both Egyptian medical papyri and Hippocrates, known as the father of medicine, suggested that a person who suspected pregnancy could insert an onion or another strongly-scented bulbous vegetable into their vagina overnight. If their breath reeked of onions the following morning, they weren’t pregnant. The reasoning was that if the womb was open, the onion smell would travel through like a wind tunnel to the mouth, indicating no fetus. If pregnant, however, the womb would be closed, preventing the odor from reaching the mouth.

3. The Latch Test

From The Distaff Gospels, a collection of women’s medical knowledge compiled in the late 15th century: “My friends, if you wish to know whether a woman is pregnant, ask her to urinate in a basin and place a latch or a key in it. It’s better to use a latch—leave it in the urine for three or four hours. Then discard the urine and remove the latch. If you see an impression of the latch on the basin, you can be sure the woman is pregnant. If not, she is not pregnant.” Wait, what?

4. Piss Prophets

As strange as the 'latch test' may seem, it did acknowledge that there was something distinct in the urine of a pregnant person compared to that of a non-pregnant one, a fact that 16th-century European 'piss prophets' also recognized. These so-called experts believed they could determine pregnancy by examining the color and characteristics of urine. Some even mixed urine with wine to observe the reaction, a method that might have worked since alcohol can interact with the proteins in the urine of a pregnant person. Naturally, these urine prophets didn’t restrict their skills to pregnancy; they also claimed to diagnose illnesses and diseases just by analyzing urine samples.

5. Watch for Changes in the Eyes

Jacques Guillemeau, a 16th-century physician, believed that you could tell if someone was pregnant just by looking at their eyes. Guillemeau, who authored a well-known treatise on ophthalmology, argued that by the second month of pregnancy, a woman’s eyes would become deep-set with smaller pupils, drooping lids, and swollen veins at the corners. While this may not be accurate, he did hit on a truth: eyes do change during pregnancy, which can affect your vision. This is why it’s not a good idea to get new contacts or glasses prescriptions while pregnant.

6. Chadwick’s Sign

During the early stages of pregnancy, roughly six to eight weeks in, the cervix, labia, and vagina may take on a noticeable bluish or purple-red color due to the increased blood flow to these areas. This distinctive sign of pregnancy was first observed in 1836 by a French physician. It was later named Chadwick’s sign, after James Read Chadwick, an obstetrician who presented his findings at an American Gynecological Society meeting in 1886.

7. The Rabbit Test

Before the 20th century, aside from observations like Chadwick’s sign, pregnancy tests were an unpleasant gamble. The breakthrough in hormone research, a major scientific focus at the time, only made pregnancy testing more uncomfortable for various lab animals like rabbits, mice, and rats.

In the 1920s, two German researchers, Selmar Aschheim and Bernhard Zondek, discovered a particular hormone in the urine of pregnant individuals that appeared to be linked to ovary growth; this hormone is now recognized as human chorionic gonadotropin, or hCG. They uncovered this by injecting the urine of pregnant people into sexually immature rabbits, rats, and mice, which would stimulate ovarian development. Typically, the pregnant person’s urine caused noticeable growth on the animals’ ovaries, a clear sign of hCG. Thus, the Rabbit Test came to be.

According to a medical journal of the time, the procedure worked like this: A sample of urine was injected into a group of young female mice for five days. On the fifth day, the mice were euthanized and autopsied to examine their ovaries. If the ovaries showed signs of activity, the test was considered positive. For faster results, additional mice could be used.

This method used a lot of rabbits, mice, and rats; although the phrase “the rabbit died” became a popular way to indicate pregnancy, in reality, all the animals—rabbits, mice, and rats—were sacrificed. While doctors could examine the ovaries of the animals without killing them, that process was often deemed too complicated.

8. The Frog Test

Although it followed the same basic concept as the Rabbit Test, this method had one significant improvement—it allowed the animal to survive. By the late 1940s, scientists discovered that when the urine of a pregnant person was injected into a living toad or frog, the amphibian would lay eggs within 24 hours. The toad or frog got to live another day and, in many cases, was subjected to yet another test.