When the great aunt postponed, the ancient woman wondered if the urgency of her doubt was the same as that of modern women. But before the invention of the pregnancy test stick, the pregnancy test was a "worldwide problem".
Today, pregnancy testing is so simple — just a piece of paper — that many people take it for granted. But before this method was discovered, people had to resort to other methods.
Human creativity is always unlimited, for pregnancy tests, they have tried a variety of funny methods, and some have achieved certain results.
Pulse
In ancient times, to determine whether women were suspicious, first look at whether there was any menopause and vomiting. Beyond that, it's the pulse.
Taking the pulse is a unique diagnostic method of Chinese medicine, so this method only appears in areas influenced by Chinese civilization.
Pregnant women's pulses will be different from ordinary people, they will produce a kind of happy pulse, which is commonly called slippery pulse, and the doctor will judge whether the woman is pregnant in this way.
But the record of misjudgments in this method is high, depending mainly on the skills and experience of doctors. In addition, there will be a slippery vein when women come to menstrual leave or are about to take menstrual leave.
"Fertilizing" wheat and barley
The ancient Egyptian method may sound strange at first, but it also bears many similarities with the methods used today.
Ancient Egyptian women packed wheat and barley in one bag each and then urinated on those bags every day. If both germinate, it may be pregnant. If neither had grown up, then she hadn't. They also used this method to determine fetal sex: if wheat grows fast, it's a boy, and if barley grows fast, it's a girl.
Live animals are injected with urine
In the early 1900s, the best way people came up with it was to inject live animals with urine and see what happened next. The theory was later proven correct. Pregnant women have hormones in their urine, which can affect many animals after injections.
It also provided inspiration for early doctors and researchers to study the matter further.
In southern Xenopus is the most popular because pregnant women can lay eggs all year round after urine injection. In addition to frogs, rats and rabbits have also been used.
Thankfully, with the invention of the pregnancy test stick, these small animals can survive.
Urinate on the latch
This strange method of pregnancy testing comes from the Women's Gospel – it is a collection of beliefs and ideas in medieval France. The method says that the woman should take a latch or key and put it in a small basin. The woman then peed until the key was completely covered and then let it go for a few more hours. If the contour of the key or latch is damaged, the woman is considered pregnant, and if the latch is not significantly changed or damaged, there is no pregnancy.
Now it seems that this method is obviously absurd and has no scientific basis.
Place onions next to pregnant women
It is said that this was a method used by the ancient Egyptians and ancient Greeks. They would place the onion near the vagina of the woman who was about to test the pregnancy and then let her sleep overnight. If she woke up in the morning and smelled onions, she wasn't pregnant.
Tested by mixing urine with alcohol
In the Middle Ages, there was a method: take a bottle of pregnant woman's urine and mix it with red wine, which is said to have an effect on the color and tone of pregnant women's urine.
Although this method is extremely crude and inaccurate, they opened up the idea of analyzing urine by analyzing it.
Urine is mixed with bleach to test
Take fresh urine and mix it with bleach – there is no dose limit. Then, observe the mixture for a moment to see what happens. If the mixture becomes very blistering, then it is likely to be pregnant; if there are no bubbles or only a little bit, there is no pregnancy.
However, it is highly recommended that you never try this test, because even if it works, because you are making a very dangerous chemical mixture – especially for pregnant women.
The main component in urine is ammonia, which, when mixed with bleach, produces a type of tear gas.
Observe & taste the urine
Today, a person's health can be judged by blood.
But back in the Middle Ages, doctors at that time believed that the state of urine was an important means of judging a person's health.
These doctors will put urine into a flask and use it to analyze pregnancy and various health problems, and in some cases, doctors will even taste urine to make a diagnosis!
Pee on a glass of white sugar
Take a few spoonfuls of white sugar and put it in a cup and urinate in the morning. People who believe in this method claim that hormones in a pregnant woman's urine cause sugar to clump rather than dissolve normally, and seeing this result proves that you are pregnant.
This method has not been scientifically tested, nor does it say how much urine should be mixed per serving of sugar, which makes it difficult to take accuracy seriously. But, at least it won't cause any harm to pregnant women.
Dandelion leaf pregnancy test
First collect the dandelion leaves – not the flowers, just the leaves – and then, as many methods do, urinate on the leaves in the morning. If the leaves do not appear to show any significant changes, then there is no pregnancy. However, if red blisters appear on the leaves, it means that the pregnancy hormones are already at work and you are about to have a baby.
This method also does not say how many leaves or how much urine is needed, and even if it is effective, there is no way to guarantee a certain accuracy.
Judge if a woman is pregnant by looking into her eyes
In the 16th century, a doctor named Jacques Guillermo thought urinalysis was completely crazy and unnecessary. In his eyes, the best way to test pregnancy is to look at a woman's eyes, other methods are unnecessary.
He believes that in the second month, a woman's eyes will change significantly, which is enough for a savvy doctor to observe, at which point her pupils will become smaller and the veins at the corners of her eyes will swell. He also believes that a woman herself can notice that her vision changes during pregnancy.