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PREGNANCY DIAGNOSIS

INTRODUCTION

It is commonly assumed that non-clinical methods for the diagnosis of pregnancy are of recent origin, but this is not so. Some 3000 years ago the Egyptians attempted to diagnose pregnancy in the human, by watering the seeds of wheat and other cereals with the urine of women. If these seeds germinated, the woman was considered to be pregnant. These, and many other tests are reviewed by Bayon (1939) and Forbes (1957). Henriksen (1941) tried out this early Egyptian test for pregnancy with fifty urines. He found that 75% were correctly positive and 85% correctly negative. This degree of accuracy was no worse than many, and better than some, of the proposed tests for pregnancy which have appeared in the last 40 years.

The first reliable test for pregnancy was that described by Aschheim & Zondek (1928a, b) using the immature female mouse. Since then many laboratory procedures