The demand for pregnancy testing: The Aschheim–Zondek reaction, diagnostic versatility, and laboratory services in 1930s Britain
نویسنده
چکیده
The Aschheim-Zondek reaction is generally regarded as the first reliable hormone test for pregnancy and as a major product of the 'heroic age' of reproductive endocrinology. Invented in Berlin in the late 1920s, by the mid 1930s a diagnostic laboratory in Edinburgh was performing thousands of tests every year for doctors around Britain. In her classic history of antenatal care, sociologist Ann Oakley claimed that the Aschheim-Zondek test launched a 'modern era' of obstetric knowledge, which asserted its superiority over that of pregnant women. This article reconsiders Oakley's claim by examining how pregnancy testing worked in practice. It explains the British adoption of the test in terms less of the medicalisation of pregnancy than of clinicians' increasing general reliance on laboratory services for differential diagnosis. Crucially, the Aschheim-Zondek reaction was a test not directly for the fetus, but for placental tissue. It was used, less as a yes-or-no test for ordinary pregnancy, than as a versatile diagnostic tool for the early detection of malignant tumours and hormonal deficiencies believed to cause miscarriage. This test was as much a product of oncology and the little-explored world of laboratory services as of reproductive medicine.
منابع مشابه
The Aschheim-Zondek Test for Pregnancy
Many different methods have been devised for the early detection of pregnancy [5]. From the time of the Ancient Egyptians, inspection of the urine has been a popular place to start. However, it was not until the discovery of hormones [6] in the early twentieth century that the development of truly reliable pregnancy [5] tests occurred. Prior to 1978, when the first home pregnancy [5] tests beca...
متن کاملThe Aschheim-zondek Test for Pregnancy.
Many different methods have been devised for the early detection of pregnancy [5]. From the time of the Ancient Egyptians, inspection of the urine has been a popular place to start. However, it was not until the discovery of hormones [6] in the early twentieth century that the development of truly reliable pregnancy [5] tests occurred. Prior to 1978, when the first home pregnancy [5] tests beca...
متن کاملThe Zondek-Aschheim Test for Pregnancy as Studied in 200 Cases *Rearranged by the Editor.
The investigations of Zondek, Aschheim, and Popanicolaou on the functions of certain of the glands of internal secretion are now so well known that they are even a subject of undergraduate physiology. These studies have incidentally led on to a biological test of pregnancy* known as the Zondek-Aschheim (1928) reaction; it is with this test that this paper is concernedAfter I had carried out the...
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In 1929 Voge18 introduced the histidine test for pregnancy, thus attempting to develop a procedure more simple and less expensive than is the Aschheim-Zondek test. He considered it reasonable to test the urine of pregnant women for the presence of histidine, since it had been suggested that a connection existed between the elaborated products of the pituitary and compounds of the beta-iminazol ...
متن کاملThe Practicability of the Aschheim-Zondek Test for Pregnancy *Read 12th March 1930.
on the Aschheim Zondek test for pregnancy. It will be remembered that the station was instituted by Professor F. A. E. Crew in the Department of Animal Genetics in Edinburgh University about one year ago. Before passing on to the results of the work, it is thought expedient to deal with a few considerations which will suggest that this test depends upon certain ovary-stimulating substances pres...
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