The rabbit test, or Friedman test, was an early
pregnancy test developed in 1931 by
Maurice Friedman and Maxwell Edward Lapham at the
University of Pennsylvania.
Test
The hormone
human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) is produced during
pregnancy and can be found in a pregnant woman's
urine and blood; it indicates the presence of an implanted fertilized egg. An earlier test, known as the AZ test, was developed by
Selmar Aschheim
Selmar Aschheim (4 October 1878 – 15 February 1965) was a German gynecologist who was a native resident of Berlin.
Born into a Jewish family, in 1902 he received a doctorate of medicine in Freiburg, and later became director of the labora ...
and
Bernhard Zondek. When urine from a woman in the early months of
pregnancy was injected into immature female
mice
A mouse ( : mice) is a small rodent. Characteristically, mice are known to have a pointed snout, small rounded ears, a body-length scaly tail, and a high breeding rate. The best known mouse species is the common house mouse (''Mus musculus' ...
, their
ovaries would enlarge and show
follicular maturation
Maturation is the process of becoming mature; the emergence of individual and behavioral characteristics through growth processes over time.
Maturation may refer to:
Science
* Developmental psychology
* Foetal development
* Maturity (geology), ...
. The test was considered reliable, with an error rate of less than 2%. Friedman and Lapham's test was essentially identical, but replaced the mouse with a
rabbit
Rabbits, also known as bunnies or bunny rabbits, are small mammals in the family Leporidae (which also contains the hares) of the order Lagomorpha (which also contains the pikas). ''Oryctolagus cuniculus'' includes the European rabbit speci ...
. A few days after the injection, the animal would be
dissected
Dissection (from Latin ' "to cut to pieces"; also called anatomization) is the dismembering of the body of a deceased animal or plant to study its anatomical structure. Autopsy is used in pathology and forensic medicine to determine the cause ...
and the size of her ovaries examined.
The rabbit test became a widely used
bioassay (animal-based test) to test for pregnancy. The term "rabbit test" was first recorded in 1949, and was the origin of a common euphemism, "the rabbit died", for a positive pregnancy test. The phrase was, in fact, based on a common misconception about the test. While many people assumed that the injected rabbit would die only if the woman was pregnant, in fact all rabbits used for the test died, as they had to be dissected in order to examine the ovaries.
A later alternative to the rabbit test, known as the "
Hogben test", used the
African clawed frog, and yielded results without the need to cut the animal open.
Modern
pregnancy tests continue to operate on the basis of testing for the presence of the hormone hCG in the blood or urine, but no longer require the use of a live animal.
References
Sources
*
External links
*
The Rabbit Testat
Snopes
About dot Com Explanationat German Inventions and Discoveries
The demand for pregnancy testing: The Aschheim–Zondek reaction, diagnostic versatility, and laboratory services in 1930s Britain, pages 240–241
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rabbit Test
Tests for pregnancy
*