From wheat to mice to rabbits to...you won't believe the techniques we've used to determine if a woman is pregnant. The history of detecting pregnancy is long, inexact, and strange. Buckle up for some crazy science.

Show Notes:

Harvard University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences: Pee is for Pregnant: The history and science of urine-based pregnancy tests

NIH timeline of the history of the pregnancy test

Margaret Crane the 26 year old inventor of the home pregnancy test

Dollar Store pregnancy tests

Transcript:

[00:00:03] Speaker A: Welcome to Brain junk. I'm Amy Barton.

[00:00:05] Speaker B: And I'm Trace Kerr. And today is everything you never knew you wanted to know about pregnancy and pee.

[00:00:14] Speaker A: I feel like I've experienced enough and I'm done with that. But I'm sure you're going to dazzle me.

[00:00:19] Speaker C: Well, yeah.

[00:00:20] Speaker B: Okay. So have you ever done the pregnancy? I mean, you have two kids, you've done the little stick, like the ept kind of thing? I've had two different versions. I've had the huddled in a bathroom waiting feverishly for not pregnant.

[00:00:35] Speaker A: Yes.

[00:00:37] Speaker B: And then also the yes sort of version.

[00:00:40] Speaker A: Yeah.

Have you seen the commercial? There's a commercial out there where they have both scenarios too, and I think that's a smart advertising tool. It's very inclusive.

[00:00:50] Speaker C: Yes.

[00:00:50] Speaker B: Because you might be thrilled and you might not be thrilled at all.

[00:00:54] Speaker A: Yeah.

[00:00:55] Speaker C: Okay.

[00:00:55] Speaker B: So while you're waiting feverishly for those two lines to appear or not appear.

[00:01:00] Speaker A: You wash your hands a lot.

[00:01:02] Speaker C: Yeah.

[00:01:03] Speaker B: You're probably not thinking about the science that got you to that moment.

[00:01:07] Speaker A: I kind of was, because I worked at a shelter and we did drug testing, but I never got any further than that. Like, what's activating this and why is it poppy seeds? It's probably not poppy seeds.

[00:01:23] Speaker B: Well, it's something. Something's in there making things turn purple. Well, for pregnancy test, it turns out that the thing that makes the test positive or negative is the amount of hcg hormone. That's human chorionic gonadotrotropin. And I'm just going to say hcg because. Yeah, it's a mouthful.

[00:01:42] Speaker A: Yes.

[00:01:43] Speaker B: Growing embryos give off hcg and that's in a pregnant person's blood and urine.

[00:01:53] Speaker A: So that's why you have to wait a little bit to have enough to show that something is growing.

[00:01:57] Speaker C: Yes.

[00:01:57] Speaker B: That's also why the test says take it in the morning when you've got the first pea of the day, because it's more concentrated. Yeah. I got to thinking about this because I was watching an episode of the great. It's Catherine the Great.

It's an odd show, but they're trying to figure out if she's pregnant or not. And so she comes out of, like a changing room and there is a sheaf of wheat with the grains on it and it's on the floor on a trace. And they have her pee on the wheat.

[00:02:27] Speaker A: Really?

[00:02:28] Speaker B: And she's told, right, if they green up and sprout that she's pregnant. And I went, ha.

[00:02:34] Speaker A:...

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