is there any truth to the folklore?

Question

Is there any truth to the folklore that doctors once used rabbits to test women for pregnacy,if so how?

Answer 1

From Wikipedia:

The rabbit test was an early pregnancy test developed in 1927. It consisted of injecting the tested woman's urine into a female rabbit, then examining the rabbit's ovaries a few days later, which would change in response to a hormone only secreted by pregnant women. The hormone, human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG), is produced during pregnancy and indicates the presence of a fertilized egg; it can be found in a pregnant woman's urine and blood. The rabbit test became a widely used bioassay (animal-based test) to test for pregnancy. The term "rabbit test" was first recorded in 1949 but became a common phrase in the English language.
Modern pregnancy tests still operate on the basis of testing for the presence of the hormone hCG. Due to medical advances, use of a rabbit is no longer required.
It is a common misconception that the injected rabbit would die only if the woman was pregnant. This led to the phrase "the rabbit died" being used as a euphemism for a positive pregnancy test. In fact, all rabbits used for the test died, because they had to be surgically opened in order to examine the ovaries. While it was possible to do this without killing the rabbit, it was generally deemed not worth the trouble and expense. One notable exception, albeit fictional, is an episode of the television series M*A*S*H. A rabbit belonging to Radar O'Reilly was used to test for pregnancy in Margaret "Hot Lips" Houlihan. To assuage Radar, rather than killing the rabbit, Hawkeye Pierce performed surgery under anesthesia.
The Aerosmith song "Sweet Emotion" refers to the test: "Can't catch me 'cause the rabbit done died."

Answer 2

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.

Answer 3

Yes, such a lot folklore is founded on actual parties. But they've been exaggerated to make a extra creative and interesting tale, considering that folklore used to be frequently handed to new generations by way of verbal reports. A tall guy turns into a large, a person combating three guys defeats an navy, and many others. Watch "Big Fish," a film approximately a storyteller.

Answer 4

I think it's true. I seem to recall that drs took blood from a possibly pregnant woman, injected it in a female rabbit, waited like 2 weeks, then killed the rabbit and examined her ovaries. If the human woman was pregnant there was a change in the rabbit's ovaries.