Pregnancy

The Woman During Pregnancy: The Signs of Pregnancy

Pregnancy Test
Pregnancy tests in one form or another were already known in antiquity and in the Middle Ages. There were usually based on the analysis of urine samples of the woman concerned. However, how helpful these tests were is another question. An ancient Egyptian method used the urine on wheat or barley seeds so see whether they would grow or not (if not, no pregnancy). This seems to have worked to some reasonable extent. However, medieval methods of discovering pregnancy by looking at the color of the urine itself or examining a mixture of urine and wine were quite unreliable.

Nevertheless, we now know that the ancient and medieval testers were somehow on the right track. The urine of a pregnant woman does indeed contain a substance that is not found in that of the other women: The hormone human chorionic gonadotropin (HCG). It is a hormone produced by the placenta during pregnancy, and modern pregnancy tests can detect it with great accuracy.

The discovery of this hormone and its role was made by medical researchers in the 20th century, and, as a result, the first scientific pregnancy tests in the laboratory became possible. Finally, in 1976, the first home pregnancy tests were approved in the United States. Soon thereafter they became widely available, enabling women to test their urine themselves and in complete privacy. Since then, the test have been further refined, and today there is also a digital home test that displays its result “pregnant” or “not pregnant” in these words on a screen.