You think you might be pregnant? Here, have a frog.

[pne]

The things you find out while browing Wikipedia.

Did you know that one way of detecting pregnancies until the 1940s was through the use of a frog called Xenopus laevis, called Apothekerfrosch or "apothecaries' frog" in German?

Apparently what you'd do was bring a sample of your morning urine to the apothecary, who'd inject it into this frog. If the woman was pregnant, the frog would react to the hormone human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) in the woman's urine and lay eggs within 48 hours; if it did so, this was a sign that the woman was indeed pregnant.

Comments

[n-true.livejournal.com]

The Wikipedia or the frog? ;D

(just being silly)

using frogs on a regular basis

[pne.livejournal.com]

"Am I pregnant? Where's my frog? What do you mean, I used up the last one yesterday and you forgot to buy new ones?"

Re: using frogs on a regular basis

[n-true.livejournal.com]

I do not want to know what animals were used instead of tampons... *cough* ;)

[denial-land.livejournal.com]

...your MOM.