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by knicki on October 13th, 2004

knicki

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I heard old pregnancy tests used a rabbit. How did this work? Who came up with this method of pregnancy detection?

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  • by keg265 on December 20th, 2004

    keg265

    The phrase, "The rabbit died," came to be a euphemism for a positive pregnancy test in the late 1920 and early 1930s. Around 1927 it was discovered that if you injected the urine of a pregnant woman into a rabbit, there would be corpora hemorrhagica in the ovaries of the rabbit. These bulging masses on the ovaries could not be seen with out killing the rabbit to inspect the ovaries, so invariably, every rabbit died, even if the woman wasn't pregnant.

    Today, no bunnies are sacrificed for a woman to find out if she's pregnant. Tests today still look for Human Chorionic Gonadtropin (hCG), we have invented tests that are much easier to perform using blood or urine.

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  • by Heather Soderstrom on December 15th, 2004

    Heather Soderstrom

    Old pregnancy tests involved giving a rabbit a womans urine. I don't know if they injected the urine or what. If the woman was pregnant then the rabbit died. I don't know the rest of the specifics. Hope this answers some of the question.

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