ArticleStudies in history and philosophy of biological and biomedical sciences2014
The demand for pregnancy testing: the Aschheim-Zondek reaction, diagnostic versatility, and laboratory services in 1930s Britain.
Article in Studies in history and philosophy of biological and biomedical sciences, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 12 papers.
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Who cites it
12 citing papers in PubMed, 36 citations in OpenAlex.
- Multiplying Meanings of Pregnancy Through Personal Accounts of Gestational Trophoblastic Disease.Body & society · 2024Article
- From Cereal Grains to Immunochemistry-What Role Have Antibodies Played in the History of the Home Pregnancy Test.Antibodies (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Review
- Biochemical Screening for Fetal Trisomy 21: Pathophysiology of Maternal Serum Markers and Involvement of the Placenta.International journal of molecular sciences · 2023Review
- A Narrative Review Discussing the Efficiency of Personalized Dosing Algorithm of Follitropin Delta for Ovarian Stimulation and the Reproductive and Clinical Outcomes.Diagnostics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Review
- [The Nest as Environment. A Historical Epistemology of the Nesting Instinct in Pregnancy].NTM · 2021Article
- Who Was Afraid of Pregnancy Tests? Gestational Information and Reproduction Policies in France (1920-50).Medical history · 2019Article
- Reproductive Politics in Twentieth-Century France and Britain.Medical history · 2019Article
- James Cossar Ewart and the Origins of the Animal Breeding Research Department in Edinburgh, 1895-1920.Journal of the history of biology · 2018Article
- A historical argument for regulatory failure in the case of Primodos and other hormone pregnancy tests.Reproductive biomedicine & society online · 2018Article
- Introduction to "Working Across Species".History and philosophy of the life sciences · 2018Article
- Thin blue lines: product placement and the drama of pregnancy testing in British cinema and television.British journal for the history of science · 2017Article
- 'The men who made the breakthrough': How the British press represented Patrick Steptoe and Robert Edwards in 1978.Reproductive biomedicine & society online · 2017Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
1 author at 1 institution in 1 country.
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Abstract
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.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.