Egyptians Took Pregnancy Tests With Pee and Seeds? 🌾 #shorts

Over three thousand years ago, an Egyptian medical scroll described a pregnancy test. A woman wet two bags, one of barley and one of emmer wheat, with her urine every day. If nothing sprouted, there was no baby. If the grain sprouted, she was pregnant, and the scroll even claimed barley first meant a boy and wheat first a girl. A German folk book from 1699 still had the same test.

In 1963, scientists in Cairo tried it. Urine from men and from women who weren't pregnant didn't make the grain sprout. Urine from pregnant women did, about seven times out of ten. But the seeds couldn't tell a boy from a girl. Hormones in a pregnant woman's urine may be why the grain grew.

Sources: Berlin medical papyrus (P. Berlin 3038); Papyrus Carlsberg Collection, University of Copenhagen (Sofie Schiødt and Kim Ryholt, 2018); P. Ghalioungui, S. H. Khalil and A. R. Ammar, "On an Ancient Egyptian Method of Diagnosing Pregnancy and Determining Foetal Sex," Medical History 7.3 (1963): 241-246; R. Haimov-Kochman, Y. Sciaky-Tamir and A. Hurwitz, "Reproduction concepts and practices in ancient Egypt mirrored by modern medicine," European Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology and Reproductive Biology 123 (2005): 3-8; J. F. Nunn, Ancient Egyptian Medicine (2002).

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