Stick woman. The Evolution of Pregnancy Testing: From Ancient Egypt to Modern At-Home Kits

How did ancient Egyptians detect pregnancy using barley seeds. What is the science behind modern pregnancy tests. Why does pregnant women’s urine contain unique hormones. How accurate are home pregnancy tests compared to laboratory methods.

The Ancient Origins of Urine-Based Pregnancy Tests

For over 3,000 years, women have relied on urine-based methods to determine pregnancy. The earliest known test, developed by ancient Egyptians, involved urinating on barley or wheat seeds. Surprisingly, this rudimentary method demonstrated a remarkable accuracy rate of 70-85% in identifying pregnancies, as confirmed by modern studies.

Why did this ancient test work? The key lies in the hormones present in pregnant women’s urine. These hormones, particularly human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG), can stimulate plant growth, causing the seeds to sprout more rapidly when exposed to urine from a pregnant woman.

Other Historical Pregnancy Detection Methods

Throughout history, various cultures developed their own unique approaches to pregnancy testing:

• Medieval European “Piss Prophets” claimed they could detect pregnancy by observing how urine interacted with various objects
• Some believed pregnant women’s urine could rust a nail
• Others thought it would change the color of a leaf
• Some even claimed to see tiny living creatures in the urine of pregnant women

While most of these methods lacked scientific validity, they demonstrate the long-standing fascination with using urine as a diagnostic tool for pregnancy.

The Dawn of Modern Pregnancy Testing

The first scientifically valid pregnancy test emerged in 1927, developed by German scientists Selmar Aschheim and Bernhard Zondek. Their method involved injecting a woman’s urine into sexually immature female mice. If the woman was pregnant, her urine would cause the mouse’s ovaries to grow and produce eggs.

How did this unusual test work? The urine of pregnant women contains high levels of hCG, a hormone that closely resembles luteinizing hormone. In mice, this hormone triggers ovulation, making it an effective indicator of pregnancy in humans.

The Drawbacks of Early Modern Tests

While groundbreaking, the Aschheim-Zondek test had several limitations:

1. It required shipping urine samples to specialized laboratories
2. Results took at least a week to obtain
3. The use of live animals made the test expensive and ethically questionable
4. Accuracy was not as high as modern standards

The Role of Hormones in Pregnancy Detection

To understand how pregnancy tests work, it’s crucial to grasp the hormonal changes that occur during pregnancy. When a fertilized egg implants in the uterus, it begins producing hCG. This hormone serves several important functions:

• Signaling the uterus to maintain the pregnancy
• Preventing the breakdown of the uterine lining
• Stimulating the production of other pregnancy-supporting hormones

As hCG levels rise rapidly in early pregnancy, it becomes detectable in urine, forming the basis for both historical and modern pregnancy tests.

The Hormone Profile of Early Pregnancy

During the first few weeks of pregnancy, several hormonal changes occur:

• hCG levels double every 48-72 hours
• Progesterone levels increase to support the developing embryo
• Estrogen production rises to prepare the uterus for growth

These hormonal shifts create a unique chemical signature in urine, which pregnancy tests are designed to detect.

The Antibody Revolution in Pregnancy Testing

The 1960s marked a significant turning point in the history of pregnancy testing with the introduction of antibody-based methods. This innovation allowed for faster, more accurate, and less invasive testing procedures.

How do antibody-based pregnancy tests work? These tests use antibodies specifically designed to bind to hCG molecules. When these antibodies encounter hCG in a urine sample, they trigger a visible reaction, typically a color change or the appearance of a line or symbol on a test strip.

Advantages of Antibody-Based Tests

The shift to antibody-based testing brought several improvements:

• Increased accuracy and reliability
• Faster results, often within minutes
• No need for animal subjects
• Potential for at-home testing

These advancements paved the way for the development of modern at-home pregnancy tests.

The Rise of At-Home Pregnancy Testing

The first at-home pregnancy test became available in Canada in 1971, revolutionizing women’s reproductive health care. However, it wasn’t until 1977 that these tests reached the United States market.

What did early at-home tests look like? The first versions were relatively complex kits that included test tubes, droppers, and various chemical reagents. Women had to carefully follow a series of steps to conduct the test, which could take up to two hours to produce results.

The Evolution of Home Testing Kits

Over the years, at-home pregnancy tests have undergone significant improvements:

1. 1988: Introduction of the first “stick” tests, similar to those used today
2. 1990s: Development of digital readout tests
3. 2000s: Increased sensitivity, allowing for earlier detection
4. 2010s: Smartphone-connected tests for result tracking and interpretation

These advancements have made pregnancy testing more accessible, user-friendly, and accurate than ever before.

The Science Behind Modern Pregnancy Tests

Today’s pregnancy tests rely on a technique called lateral flow immunoassay. This method combines the specificity of antibody-based detection with a simple, easy-to-use format.

How does a lateral flow pregnancy test work?

1. A woman urinates on the absorbent end of the test stick
2. The urine travels up the stick by capillary action
3. If hCG is present, it binds to colored antibodies in the test strip
4. These antibody-hormone complexes continue to move up the strip
5. They are captured by another set of antibodies, forming a visible line
6. A control line also appears to indicate the test is working properly

This process typically takes just a few minutes to complete, providing quick and reliable results.

Accuracy and Sensitivity of Modern Tests

Modern pregnancy tests boast impressive accuracy rates when used correctly:

• 99% accuracy when used on the first day of a missed period
• Some tests can detect pregnancy up to 6 days before a missed period
• False negatives are more common than false positives

It’s important to note that the timing of the test can affect its accuracy. Testing too early may lead to false negatives, as hCG levels may not yet be detectable.

The Impact of At-Home Pregnancy Testing

The availability of at-home pregnancy tests has had far-reaching effects on women’s health and society at large. These impacts include:

• Increased privacy and autonomy for women
• Earlier detection of pregnancy, allowing for timely prenatal care
• Reduced stigma around unplanned pregnancies
• Greater awareness of reproductive health

How have at-home tests changed women’s experiences with pregnancy? They’ve empowered women to take control of their reproductive health, providing the ability to detect pregnancy early and make informed decisions about their futures.

Challenges and Controversies

Despite their benefits, at-home pregnancy tests have also sparked some debates:

• Concerns about proper usage and interpretation of results
• Questions about the psychological impact of frequent testing
• Discussions about the commercialization of women’s health
• Ethical considerations regarding early detection and decision-making

These issues highlight the complex interplay between technology, healthcare, and personal choice in reproductive matters.

Future Directions in Pregnancy Testing

As technology continues to advance, the field of pregnancy testing is poised for further innovation. Some potential developments on the horizon include:

• Smartphone-integrated tests with advanced result analysis
• Non-invasive hormonal detection methods (e.g., sweat or saliva-based tests)
• Tests that can provide additional information about fetal health
• Biodegradable or eco-friendly test materials

What might pregnancy testing look like in the future? We may see tests that not only detect pregnancy but also provide information about the health of the developing fetus, all from the comfort of one’s home.

Ethical Considerations in Advanced Testing

As pregnancy testing technology becomes more sophisticated, it raises important ethical questions:

• Privacy concerns regarding digital test results
• The potential for early genetic screening and its implications
• Equitable access to advanced testing technologies
• The balance between information and anxiety in early pregnancy

These considerations will play a crucial role in shaping the future landscape of pregnancy testing and prenatal care.

The journey of pregnancy testing from ancient grains to modern digital devices reflects not only scientific progress but also changing societal attitudes towards women’s health and reproduction. As we look to the future, it’s clear that this field will continue to evolve, offering new possibilities and challenges in the realm of reproductive health care.

Pee is for Pregnant: The history and science of urine-based pregnancy tests

by Kelsey Tyssowski
figures by Olivia Foster

Let me look at your pee, and I’ll tell you your future.

For over 3000 years, women wondering if they’ll be mothers have heard some variation of this phrase. In the first known pregnancy tests, ancient Egyptian women urinated on barley or wheat seeds: quickly sprouting seeds indicated pregnancy. While this may sound like pseudoscience, several modern studies have shown that it works pretty well, correctly identifying 70-85% of pregnancies.

The ancient Egyptians were certainly onto something, as modern pregnancy tests work in much the same way: they detect a hormone in urine. But it’s still taken thousands of years of scientific progress to get us from peeing on seeds—and waiting a week to see if they sprout—to the fast, convenient pregnancy tests found in all pharmacies today.

“Piss Prophets”: Early history of the pregnancy test

Although it’s not intuitive that analysis of urine would be the key to pregnancy detection, most historical pregnancy tests have, for unknown reasons, focused on just that (Figure 1). In Europe, starting in the Middle Ages, “Piss Prophets” claimed to be able to predict pregnancy with a variety of bizarre urine tests. They believed that pregnant women’s urine would rust a nail, change the color of a leaf, or be home to tiny, living creatures. Based on what we know today, it’s unlikely that any of these tests were actually able to correctly detect pregnancy.

However, the first of the modern tests that could accurately detect pregnancy was no less bizarre. This test was developed in 1927 by German scientists, Aschheim and Zondek. They found that injecting a pregnant woman’s urine into sexually immature female mice would cause the mouse’s ovaries to grow and produce eggs.

Figure 1: A timeline of pregnancy testing. From ancient Egypt to today, the urine-based pregnancy test has improved in speed, accuracy, and feasibility. The oldest known test involved urinating on grain seeds and seeing if they sprouted. The late 1920s marked the first modern pregnancy tests, in which urine was injected into animals: pregnant women’s urine made them ovulate. These tests required shipping urine to a lab and took at least a week to get results. Starting in 1960, antibodies allowed testing for pregnancy to be done in doctor’s offices, making pregnancy testing faster and more routine. By 1971, an at-home version of this antibody-based test was available in Canada, although at-home testing didn’t reach the USA until 1977. The first stick tests similar to at-home tests on the market today were developed in 1988.

What’s so Special About Pregnant Women’s Urine?

If you’re like me, you’re now left with a burning question that you probably weren’t expecting to ask today: why does a pregnant lady’s pee make a juvenile mouse ovulate?

The short answer is that the urine of pregnant women has a unique blend of hormones (Figure 2). A woman (actually, anyone with a uterus, though throughout the article I’ll refer to women) becomes pregnant when an egg released from her ovary is fertilized by sperm. This fertilized egg then starts growing into an embryo and releases a hormone called hCG (a.k.a. human chorionic gonadotropin), which builds up in a woman’s body during early pregnancy. Like all hormones, hCG sends a signal. hCG’s particular job is to tell the uterus to stop the woman’s regular menstrual cycle and prepare itself for pregnancy.

Since hormones are excreted into the urine after they’re done sending their signals, the urine of pregnant women has hCG in it, whereas the urine of anyone who is not pregnant does not. hCG, it turns out, makes mice ovulate, allowing Aschheim and Zondek’s test to detect pregnancy. Since the invention of this test, all modern pregnancy tests have focused on detecting hCG.

Figure 2: Hormone levels during the menstrual cycle and pregnancy. The hormones, or signal-sending molecules, in a woman’s body change during the menstrual cycle and pregnancy. All successful urine-based pregnancy tests have detected hormones, which are secreted into the urine. During the menstrual cycle (right), the reproductive system changes throughout the month. Hormones signal for each of these changes to happen (left-top). Most notably, high levels of lutenizing hormone stimulate ovulation. When a woman becomes pregnant, her reproductive system must change in a different way to support the growing fetus. Upon pregnancy, a pregnancy-specific hormone, hCG, accumulates in a woman’s body (left-bottom). hCG is very similar to lutenizing hormone. Because of this similarity, hCG can send an ovulation signal, causing animals to ovulate when injected with the urine of pregnant women.

But why does hCG make young mice ovulate? hCG is very similar to another hormone called luteinizing hormone. In humans and in mice, luteinizing hormone stimulates the ovaries to release an egg every month of the menstrual cycle, and hCG can mimic that signal. Aschheim and Zondek’s test worked because the level of hCG in the urine of pregnant women is much higher than that of luteinizing hormone in non-pregnant, ovulating women: there’s never enough luteinizing hormone in urine to make a mouse ovulate.

Mice, Rabbits, and Frogs: Animal-based pregnancy tests

Although Aschheim and Zondek had developed an accurate test, it wasn’t exactly simple, especially compared to the drug store tests available today. They had to inject five mice per woman and wait about a week before getting the result. And even then, they could only detect the high levels of hCG that women have starting around 2 weeks after a missed period. In addition, the use of so many animals made it so that the test was expensive and relegated it to a few labs that received shipments of urine through the mail.

Today, women can know that they are pregnant as soon as 10 days after conception—a few days before a missed period—using tests they can buy for less than $10 in any drug store. But up through the 1930s, women had to wait until at least a month after conception, visit a doctor, mail her urine to a lab, and then wait at least another week to get the result of the test. Unsurprisingly, pregnancy testing in this era was not routine, used only by those who were wealthy or needed to know if they were pregnant for medical reasons.

The juvenile mouse test was slightly improved in 1931 by an American doctor, Maurice Freidman, who swapped juvenile mice for adult rabbits, which were easier to inject.

However, a test using frogs, developed the British scientist Lancelot Hogben, marked the pinnacle of these animal tests. Frogs lay eggs, so they don’t need to be killed or dissected to assess ovulation and could therefore be reused, lowering test costs. This test also gave results faster: within twelve hours. The frog test increased the availability of pregnancy testing, but it still required shipping urine to a select number of frog labs.

Tens of thousands of frogs were injected with urine throughout the 1940s-1960s, but pregnancy testing in this era was still not the norm. Most labs would only test urine sent by a doctor, meaning that women had to rely on their doctors to get tested. And many doctors—and health insurance companies—would only grant a woman a test if she had some urgent medical reason that she needed to know she was pregnant. Most women instead relied on morning sickness and sore breasts as early clues to their pregnancy, not visiting a doctor to confirm until months after conception.

Blood and Test Tubes: The pee-on-a-stick precursors

This all changed in the 1960s when scientists began to develop pregnancy tests that didn’t require the use of live animals and could therefore be done in doctor’s offices. At first, these tests had similar sensitivity for hCG, but by the early 1970s, Drs. Vaitukaitis, Braunstein, and Ross had developed a test that could detect pregnancy just 2-3 weeks after conception—on the first day of a missed period. These new tests used antibodies.

Antibodies are molecules that recognize and stick to other molecules. In their usual job, they’re sticking to the molecules of bacteria or viruses to alert the immune system to these invaders. In pregnancy tests, however, scientists engineered antibodies that recognized and stuck to hCG. Armed with these hCG antibodies, the urine of pregnant women, and, strangely enough, sheep’s blood, we had a new pregnancy test.

To perform the test, scientists attached hCG to the outside of the sheep’s blood cells, decorating the blood cells with hCG. They then mixed these blood cells with the other test components: hCG antibodies and urine.

Based on the way that antibodies stick to hCG and to each other, the hCG-decorated blood cells would clump if they were mixed with the urine of a woman who was not pregnant. On the other hand, if the blood cells and hCG antibody were mixed with the urine of a woman who was pregnant, the blood cells would not clump. So by looking at the clumpiness of the blood cells, doctors could tell if a woman was pregnant (Figure 3).

Figure 3: Early antibody-based pregnancy tests. Early antibody-based pregnancy tests, including the first at-home tests, used hCG antibodies and hCG-decorated blood cells. The person performing the test would mix these two components with a woman’s urine. If she was not pregnant, the hCG antibodies would stick to the hCG-decorated blood cells and to each other, causing the blood cells to clump together (left). On the other hand, if the woman was pregnant, the high levels of hCG in her urine would stick to the hCG antibodies, preventing them from sticking to the blood cells (right). Therefore, if the woman was pregnant, her urine would prevent the blood cells from clumping. When reading the results of the test, the operator would look at whether the blood cells clumped to determine pregnancy.

These and other, similar antibody-based tests could give doctors results in a few minutes to hours and finally made pregnancy testing mainstream. At first, women still had to visit their doctor to get a pregnancy test.

But that, too, changed in the 1970s (1971 in Canada, 1977 in the US) when the first at-home pregnancy test hit the market, using this same blood-and-antibody technology. This test looked like a kid’s chemistry kit, including test tubes, droppers, dried capsules of sheep’s blood cells, and hCG antibody serum. Success in completing the test required carefully following a 10-step process all while keeping the test tubes in a place free from vibrations for two hours. But if used correctly, it was 97% accurate for a positive result and 80% accurate for a negative one. And for the first time, a woman could confirm that she was pregnant without ever contacting a doctor.

Pee on a Stick: The birth of the modern pregnancy test

Since the 1970s, at-home pregnancy tests have become the norm, with about 20 million sold per year in the US alone. Current stick tests, which were developed in 1988, are much easier to use, don’t involve sheep’s blood or test tubes, and are still extremely accurate: about 99% for a positive result. But they are doing the same thing we’ve been doing for thousands of years: detecting hormones in women’s urine. Modern pregnancy tests still use hCG antibodies, but instead of interacting with hCG-decorated blood cells, the antibodies interact with dye-activating molecules. These dye-activating molecules are what causes the blue line, or other symbol, to appear on positive pregnancy tests.

Women today usually find out that they’re pregnant just after (and sometimes before) missing a period in the comfort of their own bathroom without the involvement of a doctor. But as recently as the 1950s, women could not definitively confirm pregnancy until they started to noticeably gain weight or feel the fetus move—several months into the pregnancy. And until the 1970s, women relied on doctors to tell them that they were pregnant.

The development of the pregnancy test was not just a feat of scientific advance, but also allowed for a cultural revolution. The at-home pregnancy test became available a time when women were fighting back against the male-dominated medical establishment, trying to learn more about their health and their bodies. And it granted women more information about and control over their bodies. Women could use this information as they liked, without pressure from a doctor: they could decide for themselves to get a safe, early abortion or start prenatal care.

As a woman who is grateful for this cultural advance, I want to say thanks to the first person who thought, “I bet I can tell if she’s pregnant by looking at her pee.”

Kelsey Tyssowski is a graduate student in the Department of Genetics at Harvard Medical School. She is also a former editor-in-chief of the SITN Blog. You can find her on Twitter: @kelseytyss.

For more information:

• A Thin Blue Line: a pregnancy test history put together by the NIH
• An academic article about the science and culture of animal-based pregnancy tests
• An excellent, but hard-to-access, academic review article about the history of the pregnancy test, and a less-descriptive, but similar, open-access article
• An article in The Atlantic that describes the history of the pregnancy test from a more historical perspective
• A video explaining the science behind modern pregnancy tests

Young women are sick of being told to stick together and watch their drinks | Gaby Hinsliff

A young woman, out for a night’s clubbing, suddenly feels the room begin to spin.

She blacks out and wakes up feeling terrible, with only vague memories of the night before and a mysterious throbbing pain in the back of her hand. And then, on closer inspection, she finds a pinprick in the skin. She thinks she remembers a sharp scratch, like an injection, before everything went blank.

It sounds like the stuff of urban myth, the kind of gap-year horror story that starts in a remote backstreet bar in South America and ends in the victim supposedly waking up missing a kidney. Yet reports of so-called “spiking by needle” – young women on a night out allegedly being injected by unseen strangers with something that knocks them out – are being taken seriously by police in cities including Nottingham, Edinburgh and Glasgow. Heartbreakingly, there have been reports of nervous women going out in thick, needle-proof jeans and leather jackets. However rare these incidents may turn out to be, they fit a pattern of behaviour that for many feels horribly familiar.

Once upon a time, the idea of spiking drinks – slipping drugs or extra shots of alcohol into a glass while the victim’s back was turned, rendering them vulnerable to a would-be rapist or thief – seemed outlandish too. But a BBC investigation in 2019 uncovered 2,600 reports of drink-spiking to police in England and Wales over the previous four years, and now the return of nightlife post-lockdown seems to be bringing old fears out of the woodwork.

Nottinghamshire police have recorded 44 reported spiking incidents since September, 12 of them involving “something sharp’’. Student unions nationwide are collecting accounts of suspected drink-tampering, with reported incidents in Sheffield, Norwich, and Canterbury. After enduring months of cancelled music festivals and shuttered bars, this year’s freshers deserve to be out having the time of their lives. But for some, socialising is now edged with anxiety.

A stranger’s hand unceremoniously shoved up your skirt on a night out has become almost routine for young women. Street harassment – not just catcalling but crude propositioning and being followed by men who may get aggressive if rejected – is normalised. Young women are sick of being told to stick together, or to watch their drinks, when the problem is male violence, not female vigilance. Why should they tie themselves in ever more anxious knots trying to stay safe, while the perpetrators carry on regardless? What depresses many older women, meanwhile, is that, if anything, this kind of everyday harassment seems to have got worse – creepier and more aggressive – over the years, even as the world opens up for younger women in so many ways.

Bad things have, of course, always happened in nightclubs or at parties. Some men have always taken advantage of women who are out of it. But Generation X didn’t go out at night worrying that someone might poison us. Nobody had to offer us lids for our drinks, as they do our daughters. The misogyny we encountered was raw and open, but there’s something so darkly insidious about the idea of furtively doping women into submission.

One of the more disturbing aspects of the spiking-by-needle allegations is that injecting a drug is likely to have a much more dramatic effect than getting someone to swallow it unwittingly, making it harder to smuggle a woman out past the bouncers by pretending she’s merely drunk. Is this really about a desire to humiliate and frighten women, rather than to sexually assault them? Do some men get their kicks simply from making a woman pass out in front of them, as if they had been choked by an invisible hand? Young women are sometimes mocked for being anxious, fragile snowflakes. But given the pressures some of them are under, they seem positively warrior-like to me.

Students unions are already organising a boycott for Friday 29 October under the hashtag #GirlsNightIn, urging young women to take a night off clubbing and go protesting instead. Since there’s nothing anyone can do to stop some stranger with a needle, short of never actually leaving the house, the spotlight is finally falling, as it should, on tackling the perpetrators. If the nightlife industry wants women’s custom, without which they would quickly go bust, then it’s time to prioritise their safety – even if that does mean inconveniencing men with more stringent searches or measures already common in student union bars, from better trained security to stocks of spike-proof stoppers that fit over a beer bottle. But while students are right to use their consumer clout, nightclubs won’t solve this on their own.

Drink-spiking remains hard to prosecute while women remain reluctant to go to the police for fear that they won’t be taken seriously, and that even when they do, evidence may be hard to find. Freshers who have overdone it on a night out are too common a sight on overstretched A&E wards to be routinely tested now for suspicious substances; and victims are likely to be confused, struggling to piece together what happened. But that is a cue for police and prosecutors to find ways round these obstacles, not park these cases as too difficult. Right now, spiking has become just another thing men do to women with relative impunity. Barring an overnight sexual revolution, that will change only with a realistic fear of getting caught.

Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist

History of the Home Pregnancy Test

When it hit shelves in the 1970s, the Predictor pregnancy test, made by Organon Pharmaceuticals, went for $10. On Tuesday, the auction house Bonham’s sold the original prototype, along with the first consumer version of the test, for $11,875.

The Predictor was the brainchild of a freelance designer named Margaret Crane, who had been hired in Organon in 1967 to work on a new cosmetics line. While touring the company’s lab, she wrote in a note accompanying the Bonham’s sale,

I noticed multiple lines of test tubes suspended over a mirrored surface. I was told that they were pregnancy tests … Each test tube contained reagents which when combined with a pregnant women’s urine, would display a red ring at the base of the test tube, as reflected in the mirror.

Inspired, she set to work developing a simplified version of the test: At her home in New York, she assembled a plastic paper-clip holder, a mirror, a test tube, and a dropper, and presented her kit to Organon a few months later. In 1969, the company applied for a patent in her name.

“I thought how simple that was,” she recalled of seeing the tests for the first time, according to Bonham’s. “A woman should be able to do that herself.”

Simple, though, had been a long time in the making.

* * *

A long, long time before women peed on sticks, they peed on plenty of other things.

One of the oldest descriptions of a pregnancy test comes from ancient Egypt, where women who suspected they were pregnant would urinate on wheat and barley seeds: If the wheat grew, they believed, it meant the woman was having a girl; the barley, a boy; if neither plant sprouted, she wasn’t pregnant at all. Avicenna, a 10th-century Persian philosopher, would pour sulfur over women’s urine, believing that the telltale sign was worms springing from the resulting mixture. In 16th-century Europe, specialists known as “piss prophets” would read urine like tea leaves, claiming to know by its appearance alone whether the woman who supplied it was pregnant.

But as strange as it sounds to modern ears, “piss prophecy,” so to speak, never really fell out of favor—at least not with pregnancy tests. The name changed, and the tools changed. And what also changed, most significantly, was who got to play the part of the prophet.

In 16th-century Europe, specialists known as “piss prophets” would read urine like tea leaves.

Doctors in the 18th and 19th centuries, shaped by the scientific discourse of the Enlightenment, abandoned the belief that urine could simply be eyeballed, instead pursuing the idea that it must contain some less easily identifiable traits—some bacteria or crystal structure, visible only under a microscope—that could signify a pregnancy. Around the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, scientists began to discover the chemicals that regulated various functions in the human body, including reproduction. The word “hormone” was coined in 1905; in the 1920s, human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG)—a hormone found in high concentrations in pregnant women—was identified.

The first true precursor to today’s pregnancy test was developed in 1927, when the German scientists Selmar Aschheim and Bernhard Zondek discovered that injecting a pregnant woman’s urine into a mouse or rat would send it into heat, which could be ascertained only by dissecting the animal. Over the next few decades, the AZ test, named after its creators, replaced rodents with rabbits—the phrase “the rabbit died” was, at one point, a euphemism for a positive pregnancy test—and then frogs (so many frogs were exported from southern Africa to the U.S. for pregnancy tests, in fact, that some scientists believe they may be the source of a fungal disease currently threatening the country’s amphibian population). In the 1960s, scientists ditched the animals entirely, turning instead to immunoassays, or tests that combined hCG, hCG antibodies, and urine—if a woman was pregnant, the mixture would clump together in certain distinctive ways.

While women no longer needed a frog or a rabbit, though, they still needed a doctor. The test also frequently turned up false positives, as hCG could easily be confused for other similar hormones. A more accurate test wouldn’t arrive until 1972, when Judith Vaitukaitis and Glenn Braunstein, researchers at the National Institutes of Health, identified an immunoassay that could successfully measure levels of hCG, rather than simply detecting its presence. Recognizing the potential of their discovery, the two attempted to patent it on behalf of NIH—but were shot down by the institute’s lawyers, who argued that because the project had been funded with public dollars, nobody should receive any royalties for the resulting product. Instead, the knowledge went immediately into the public domain, until pharmaceutical companies recognized the same potential that Vaitukaitis and Braunstein had seen.

In the meantime, both scientists moved on to other things—which, according to an oral history by NIH, may have been an act of self-preservation as much as anything. To obtain enough urine for another part of their hormone research, unrelated to pregnancy tests, the scientists had struck up a deal with a nearby retirement home for nuns: The nuns would collect their urine over several weeks in plastic containers big enough to hold around 15 gallons at a time. Once a month, Vaitukaitis, Braunstein, and their colleagues—including “someone who was strong enough to lift these bottles,” Vaitukaitis recalled—would trek over to haul it all back to the lab.

“We got a lot of stuff done with that,” she recalled, but “I would never want to do it again.”

* * *

“The pregnancy test has a very different significance to different people,” Marcel Wanders, a product designer for a 1990 version of Organon’s test, told The New York Times in 2012. “You can’t put too much meaning into it.”

He was referring to the challenge of choosing the graphic that would appear on the test to signify a pregnancy. In the years before today’s blue lines, The Times reported, a positive result came in the form of a baby’s smiling face, a swollen belly, even a single wiggling sperm—cutesy, cheery images announcing news that, for many women, is neither cheery nor cute.

Iconographic missteps aside, though, this was the defining feature of the home pregnancy test: In the privacy of their own bathrooms, women could—to borrow Wanders’ phrasing—put their own meaning onto it, a fact that led some to protest the test’s rising popularity even as others celebrated it.

Unlike medical tests that reveal something otherwise unknowable about a body, a pregnancy test can only speed the delivery of information; regardless of who pees on what, a pregnancy has other, more obvious ways of making itself known with time. The home pregnancy test, then, wasn’t just about knowing; it was about taking charge, a sentiment that fit in nicely with the ethos of the time. The first home test approved by the FDA, Warner-Chilcott’s e.p.t. (short for “early pregnancy test,” and later for “error-proof test”), came to market in 1976, followed soon after by the Predictor and a handful of others. At that point, Our Bodies, Ourselves was six years old, and abortion had been legal in the U.S. for three.

A 1978 ad called the test “a private little revolution that any woman can easily buy at her drugstore.”

“In many ways,” the NIH website notes, “a pregnancy test is difficult to market. The term ‘hCG’ sounds foreign and the phrase ‘urine stream’ is difficult to sugar coat.” From the beginning, advertisements for home pregnancy tests focused less on how they worked and more on what they offered—privacy, autonomy, knowledge of one’s own body. “Every woman has the right to know when she is pregnant,” read one 1970s ad for the Predictor, “and to know it with the least possible fuss and bother in the least possible time.” And a 1978 ad, this one for the e.p.t., called it “a private little revolution that any woman can easily buy at her drugstore.”

But in any revolution, even a private little one, something is being overthrown. In this case, it was the authority of doctors, not all of whom were happy about a changing status quo. Unregulated tests had already been recalled several times before the FDA approved the e.p.t, they pointed out. Tests could be used incorrectly; they could be flat-out wrong; putting them in the hands of the patients, they argued, would harm more than it would help. In an editorial published in The American Journal of Public Health in 1976, one physician argued against the use of home tests: “I feel that the reputations of both the commercial concerns and the profession of medical laboratory technology will suffer unless legislation is introduced to limit the use of such potentially dangerous kits.”

In a note following the piece, the journal’s editors sided firmly on the side of the tests: “Not everyone,” they wrote, “needs carpenters to hammer in their nails.”

Woman fails to prove the COVID-19 vaccine made her magnetic during Ohio House hearing

A nurse during an Ohio House hearing on Thursday tried to prove a debunked theory that taking the COVID-19 vaccine makes a person “magnetic.”

Joanna Overholt tried to place a key and bobby pin against her body in an effort to prove that both would stick to her skin, though the attempt ultimately failed. Overholt was trying to attest to a conspiracy theory that’s been widely circulated by a Cleveland-area physician and anti-vaccine activist, Sherri Tenpenny, who also testified in front of Ohio lawmakers.

“Explain why the key sticks to me,” Overholt said during the hearing. In video of her testimony, the key sticks to her for approximately three seconds before she removes it.

“It sticks to my neck too,” she added, though she failed to get it to stay. She also attempted to make a bobby pin stick, though that failed as well.

Overholt testified in favor of the proposed Enact Vaccine Choice and Anti-Discrimination Act, which the Ohio Capital Journal reports would prohibit anyone from mandating or asking people to take a vaccine, including the COVID-19 vaccine. 

Tenpenny has also circulated false claims that the vaccine could “interface” with 5G cellular towers, The Washington Post reported. 

On the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) page regarding myths and facts about the vaccine, the CDC says that the vaccine cannot make you magnetic.

“Receiving a COVID-19 vaccine will not make you magnetic, including at the site of vaccination which is usually your arm. COVID-19 vaccines do not contain ingredients that can produce an electromagnetic field at the site of your injection,” the CDC says. “All COVID-19 vaccines are free from metals such as iron, nickel, cobalt, lithium, and rare earth alloys, as well as any manufactured products such as microelectronics, electrodes, carbon nanotubes, and nanowire semiconductors.”

A Stick Figure: Twiggy – The New York Times

There was a time when dinosaurs walked the earth. You could usually find them in the kitchen. They had curvy bodies and fleshy, deliciously rounded arms and shoulders, and you could hear them coming by the reassuring lcick, click, click of their heels. They were skilled in the Stone Age arts of ironing and medning and comforting their young. They wore red lipstick, spent hours filing their nails and had hair made of an unmangeable substance that had to be cleaned and curled by professionals. Their pointy brasand prehistoric girdles created artificial shapes withtiny midsections, but under theirshirt-waist dresses their bodies were natural, built for hugging and for eating homemade gingersnaps right off the cookie sheet. Back in the land before time, when big breasts were more important than thin thighs, the ideal woman was an hourglass with wavy hair, a pretty name and a nurturing soul, a woman as sexy as Marilyn and as demure as Jacqueline. It was 1967.

Then came Twiggy.

Twiggy was the anti-woman: she had no breasts, she wore white lipstick, her nails were bitten, her shoulders were bony and her hair was cut like a boy’s. She was the negative image of everyhting a woman was supposed to look like. She was so skinny it was hard to tell she was a woman at all. Instead of a shirtwaist, she wore a skirt no bigger than a proper lady’s pocket handkerchief. Instead of standing as if she were balancing a book on her head, she was knock-knee and coltishly awkward. She was everything unfeminine in a way that seemed, mysteriously, totally girlish. The power of her appeal redefined feminity. Though she was only a 91-pound teen-ager, she cast a gargantuan shadow over the image of the American housewife – a lovable species that would soon become extinct.

Twiggy landed at Kennedy airport in March 1967, in the spring of the Summer of Love; she got famous so fast that when she was first asked for an interview, she didn’t know what an interview was. A 17-year-old high-school dropout, she was born Lesley Hornby, but her boyfriend, Nigel Davies, created her look and tought up names for both of them: Twiggy for her and Justin De Villeneuve forhim. Twiggy became an instant icon, a symbol for a new kind of woman with a new kind of streamlined, androgynous sex appeal. She was the bodiless embodiment of a different way of looking and dressing and the different way of living that went with it.

In one way, the cnages meant freedom. The new woman was a professional as well as a domestic – she had an economic and sartorial independence unheard of in the 1950’s. She could travel alone and know the joys of providing for a family, and if she wanted to, she could hire someone to bake her cookies and comfort her children.

Classic Corn Dogs and Cheese-on-a-Stick

This recipe is said to be the one used by good ol’ Corn Dog 7. (Does anyone remember Corn Dog 7?) Use whatever kind of hot dog or cheese you’d like…and hint: the leftover batter makes delicious pancakes.

For the second State Fair recipe, I whipped up some hot dogs and cheese-on-a-stick reminiscent not just of state fairs and carnivals…but also of shopping malls in the eighties: this is said to be the same batter recipe used by the famous Corn Dog 7 chain of stores, and if you don’t remember Corn Dog 7, you’re way too young and probably don’t have slack abdominal muscles or jowls yet. I feel very sorry for you!

Corn Dog 7 had fabulous hot dogs, of course…but their Cheese-on-a-Stick was what I loved the most as I traipsed through the mall with my best friend Jenn, buying things like neon pink fingerless gloves and Soloflex posters and Duran Duran tapes.

I miss the Eighties so much it hurts. I’m going to go text Jenn right now.

One thing about this blessed, glorious batter: if you have any left over, it makes perfect pancakes the next day. And for that matter, you can use the batter to coat and fry cooked breakfast sausage links, then serve them with pancake syrup for “dipping.” The possibilities are endless. And fattening. And endlessly fattening.

First things first: Use chopsticks for sticks! You can buy chopsticks in bulk at Asian markets, and they’re nice and cheap. And sturdy.

Stick ’em into the hot dogs so that they’re about 2/3 of the way through.

For the sticks of cheese, I used big skewers…but if you’re serving to kids, I’d stick with the chopsticks to avoid the sharp point. I used cheddar, jalapeno jack, and (just for kicks) Havarti with Dill.

Now it’s time to make the batter! Into a large bowl (this one wasn’t large enough) add Krusteaz pancake mix. I don’t think any alarms would go off if you used Bisquick or Aunt Jemima. But the Corn Dog 7 recipe called for Krusteaz, and I do what Corn Dog 7 tells me to do.

Seriously. Just do what Corn Dog 7 tells you to do and you’re good to go.

To the pancake mix, add some yellow corn meal. This gives the batter some good texture, and also makes the pancakes you might make with the leftover batter out-of-this-world delicious.

Stir it together…

Then beat together a couple of eggs.

Pour it into the dry mixture…

Then pour in 5 to 6 cups of water. I started with about 4 cups of water, then worked my way up from there.

This is way too thick and gloopy.

This is a little too thin. (I added too much water, then had to sprinkle in a little more pancake mix to thicken it back up.

This is just right.

I transferred the batter to a cylindrical crock I had to make it easier to dip in the whole hot dog…then one-at-a-time, I dipped…

Then plunged it into hot canola oil, stick and all. Fiddle around with tongs a bit to turn it over so that it browns evenly…

Then, when it’s nice and deep golden brown, remove it from the oil and let it drain on a paper towel-lined plate. And don’t worry if it has a couple of tails or lumps. Just call it rustic and you’re good.

Or maybe…or maybe “artisan” is a better word.

Artisan Corn Dogs. I like the sound of that.

Do the same with the cheese.

Dip…

Dunk…

And remove when it’s deep golden brown. Artisan Cheese-on-a-Stick.

My goodness. So, so good.

About frying the cheese: It’s a little trickier than the corn dogs, because you walk a fine line between not frying it long enough (and the cheese not fully melting) and frying it too long (the outside gets too brown OR the cheese bursts through the batter and starts bubbling in the oil.) It might take you a couple of pieces before you get the hang of it.

But when you do? Oh, dear. Is it ever worth it.

Here’s the Havarti. Good. Very, very good.

Serve the corn dogs…

And the cheese…

With a yummy, spicy mustard.

Mmmmm. This really hit the spot the other day.

I’m going to call this “A Portrait of a Corn Dog.”

I’m going to call this “Corn Dog Sleeping Under the Stars.”

 
You know what else I’m going to do? I’m going to stop now.

Whip these up sometime, guys! They’re fun to make and really, really yummy. Marlboro Man and the boys, the corn dog connoisseurs in our house, love them because they’re crispy on the outside and soft on the inside. Yum.

Enjoy!

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Stick Trick Saturday – Women’s Edition

Thanks for checking out a fresh episode of Stick Trick Saturday! Season 3 kicked off last week with Gabriel Sgambettera’s trick he called The Roundabout! This week is going to be less of a lesson and more of a montage of some of the coolest tricks we’ve ever seen, with a WOMEN’S LACROSSE STICK!

Yep, you heard me! This week is all about women’s lacrosse because we’ve had female contestants in our stick tricks competitions before, but we’ve never see anyone bust out moves like these with a women’s stick! Our friends over at Gameday Lacrosse sent over a ton of clips of themselves busting out moves at camp, the practice field and even the basement for us to share while they help us put together some instructional episodes using women’s sticks!

Let me tell you straight up, if you want softer hands for catching passes, landing epic stalls or busting out crazy stick tricks, you MUST start using a women’s lacrosse stick. Am I crazy? Probably. But here’s a few reasons why:

• Women’s heads have a way thinner sidewall.
• With a woman’s stick it’s way harder to catch a stall.
• It takes more concentration to catch with a woman’s stick.
• It will develop soft hands quicker than a leather glove full of lotion.
• Guys, you will look 1,000x cooler impressing ladies with their own sticks.
• Ladies, you will blow other girls’ minds with your new moves.

Good enough reasons, right?! Now get to know today’s star…

Caitlin Jackson began her career by leading Norwell High School to their first ever MIAA State Championship. Jackson went on to win four straight Division I NCAA National Championships with Northwestern University. Up graduating, Jackson has been an assistant and consultant with the UConn, Iona College, and Columbia. She is the Owner and Director of Gameday Lacrosse, and is currently assisting with lacrosse operations at the UPenn.

Episode 1: Women’s Edition – Gameday Lacrosse

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Trick: Women’s Edition
Host: Caitlin Jackson – Gameday Lacrosse
Episode: Season 3, Episode 2

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Location: New York City, New York, USA
Claim to fame: 4x National Champion; Owner of Gameday Lacrosse

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To submit your own episode of Stick Trick Saturday to be featured in Season 3, we ask for you to fill out a couple of simple questions and we will reach out with further instructions!

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90,000 A pensioner who promised to hit Volodin with a stick received a supplement to her pension

We found out how Poluiko ended up next to Volodin and talked to the main character of the video. The video below captures a sensational conversation – a pensioner complains that billions are being stolen in the country, people live without gas and receive scanty money.

It was not easy to find Anna Poluiko’s contacts. The woman does not have a cell phone, the pensioner does not sit on social networks – she does not use the Internet.Her contacts were given to us at the regional Council of Veterans. True, they did not warn how the conversation might turn out.

– Wait, so you are from Moscow? Do you live in Moscow? Do you work there? – Anna Alexandrovna began the interrogation.

– In Moscow.

– I don’t even know, should I swear at you right away or how?

– For what?

– What can I tell you? My baby, I turned ninety years old. I just never do anything.Before, I lowered an old knitted sweater, and from these threads I knitted a sweater, a sock, and mittens for my children. Understood? And now you write, write bubbles into the void, why pound water in a mortar?

– We write different texts.

– And you need to write only on the case. We must do everything for a positive result. Understood? And then you all write, but where is the result?

– Let’s write about you.

– And I do not want to be written about me at all.Because there are many like me. It is a pity that not the majority. And most of the lazy and mean. And if a person is lazy, he is automatically dumb, do you understand? It is truth. Do you have children? How many?

– Yes. One.

– You see, you are lazy. There must be three children.

– How much do you have?

– I have a lot. Do you know how old I am, what years I gave birth? Think about it, and then blather and ask a question. I am not good at water in a mortar. And there are too many people like you who want to write about me.So I end the conversation. Journalist from Moscow, go do useful business, not idle chatter.

– Tell us about your meeting with Volodin. Was it random?

– Listen, my golden, beautiful woman. I’ve already talked a lot about this. And I don’t want to sit by the phone and repeat for the hundredth time. What is the essence? Do you know the essence of my conversation with Volodin?

– Of course.

– Well, so pound the water in the mortar.Here you are in Moscow, and I am in Saratov. I am a war veteran, a home front worker, and I do not receive any benefits. And you got snickering there in Moscow, do you understand?

– I wouldn’t say that we got drunk.

– You go down to earth, see how people live.

– I know.

– You don’t know shit and you can’t know. You don’t know what hunger is, how do you know something. I repeat, you are your bourgeois in Moscow, you have become too hungry, that’s all. What do you want from your grandmother?

– I didn’t think that you would take innocent questions that way.

– Did you think? I also thought that the people in our country are reasonable. And what kind of people turned out to be. Everyone, I wish you success. Goodbye, my dear.

“We have nothing to lose, the pension will not be taken away”

In fact, Anna Alexandrovna did not talk much about her meeting with Volodin. We found one 4-minute interview of a pensioner, which was published on the You-Tube channel “Typical Saratov”. Here are the words of a pensioner: “I’m going to the veterans council. I reach the corner.Stopped to cross the road. I see there is a crowd of young men … And I have a picture – one on the same TV was the same when they talked about stalls, idlers. Then I was taken aback. I didn’t know yet that Volodin was there. I think I’ll find out now what the matter is.

I look, they stand calmly, do not fight. Suddenly Volodin’s secretary met me. Everyone here knows her. She rushes at me: “What question are you on?”

I was even more stunned. She asked me several times. I didn’t answer. I walk past her.And when I realized what it smelled like, I’m right at Volodin. Everyone froze. I have one question: “You see, I am a home front worker. Received the title. But there were idiots who equated a home front worker with a labor veteran. Now I have only a 50 percent discount on communal services from my benefits. Where is my perk – the question. And away we go. And off we go. I got so excited, my hands are shaking. He holds my hand. And that’s all, my native country is wide. ”

We contacted an acquaintance of Anna Poluiko, the chairman of the council of veterans of the Frunzensky district of Saratov, Bronislav Kostaltsev.The man turned out to be much nicer than his acquaintance.

– Anna Aleksandrovna and I have been working together for 9 years in the veterans’ council, but in recent years she has not worked with us, after all, she is already many years old. But we go to events together. Here, on the first of June we were at school at the Children’s Day.

– After communicating with Volodin, Poluiko became a city celebrity?

– There is such a thing. But I, too, asked Volodin an unpleasant question that week. Recently, we had an active member of the district, he came and performed at the 77th school.He spoke well about roads, schools, sidewalks. I asked him then, and when will you start raising pensions?

– What is he?

– Avoid answering.

– What is your pension?

– He asked me about this too. I replied: I am a colonel, so I get 37 thousand plus another five thousand by age, I am already over 80. Then everyone in the audience began to be indignant, they say, I have a considerable pension, civilians have 15-18 thousand. So I served for 32 years. I traveled to the Far East, abroad, and there were other things in Chernobyl.

– Many people still doubt that Anna Alexandrovna’s meeting with the Chairman of the State Duma was accidental.

– Don’t hesitate. She lives near the place where she met him, often walks there. So they crossed. Nobody had scheduled a meeting. After that conversation, she came to the veterans council. The head of our Frunzensky district also arrived there. So Anna Alexandrovna also shook him by the sleeve, nurtured him. I repeated everything that I had said to Volodin. Then she was presented with gifts, put in a car and sent home.That’s how it was.

– She always says what she thinks.

– She loves to talk. Once I caught our governor, shook him by the jacket with the words: “Where are you throwing money in?”

– Did Poluiko watch the video herself, which was discussed by the whole country?

– She saw everything. Then she called me and said that all the journalists want to interview her. But the most interesting thing: she immediately received a call from the Pension Fund. They said that she would receive an increase in her pension.They asked her not to go anywhere, they said it was hot outside. They promised that they would fill out all the papers for her, recount everything and do everything. This is how the power moved.

– Now local officials will probably bypass you.

– What to bypass us. Who can we do anything other than grind with our tongue. By the way, the elderly responded with approval to Poluiko’s conversation with Volodin. She told the truth.

– Then did they call you from the administration, did they say that Anna Alexandrovna had gone too far?

No, no one called.We always tell the truth. We have nothing to lose. The pension will not be taken away from us.

90,000 A woman protecting her son ran after the offender with a stick

Legally, such violence is unacceptable, criminal liability threatens for it, troubles await the parents of a boy who offended another child.

“I think one mom overdid it. It’s good that she didn’t see what I was shooting – otherwise I would have gotten to it.I was with my 4-year-old son, “- said the author of the video about the events of last Saturday in Santarves Park.

The video shows a woman running around the playground with a stick in her hands. the child alone, and call the police. Other passers-by threaten the woman with fines.

“The police do not help, – the child shouts, and the woman with a stick answers the man. – Am I out of my mind? When your child is beaten, then you will see! “

The author of the video said that the boy the woman was chasing lives with his parents who cannot cope with him.This boy beat another child, and then molested him, therefore, according to eyewitnesses, the victim’s mother decided to teach him a lesson – no services helped.

“The boy was hit with a stick, but it did not appear on the video. The blow fell on the back. Nobody called the police, because the woman calmed down under pressure from eyewitnesses,” wrote the woman who sent the video. According to her, the victim was about 10 years old, and his abuser was about 12 years old.

According to the GKP of Kaunas County, Gintare Zhilite, one report of violence in that area has been received since May 8, but it was not a child who was injured there.

The representative of the State Service for the Protection of Children’s Rights and Adoption, Nerunga Kolkaite-Beline, said that one should not show aggression against fighters.

“It is very important to resolve the conflict peacefully with the child’s parents. If a child is offended at school, you need to contact the teacher and the administration. If the child is offended, the police and children’s rights specialists will help,” the specialist said.

She stressed that for violence against a child, even imprisonment for up to 2 years is threatened.Kolkaite-Beline also noted that according to the law, parents must properly educate their child, take care of him, create harmonious conditions for his physical and mental development, in order to prepare him for an independent life.

For abuse of parental rights and for their non-fulfillment, for neglect, cruel treatment of a child, parents also face criminal liability and imprisonment for up to 5 years.

Features of matrimonial relations in pre-Petrine Russia – Rossiyskaya Gazeta

How is the husband’s power justified?

For traditional societies, to which pre-Petrine Russia belongs, a patriarchal family is characteristic, where the head of the family – a man authoritarianly dominated all household members ¹ .The authority of the head of the family was also reinforced by the position of the church, which, based on the Gospel, drew a parallel between the authority of God over Christ and Christ over people with the authority of a husband over a wife: “Every husband is the head of Christ, the head of a wife is a husband, and the head of Christ is God.” ² .

Such power of the head of the family over his wife and the rest of the household, including the right to use violence against them, was not only reflected in folk customs, but was justified by religious teachings and enshrined in canon law.

In the “Word of John Chrysostom about good wives” the power of a husband over a wife was explained by the origin of the latter: “You were taken from your husband, and let you possess thee; you obey him in silence.” This work defined the nature of the relationship between spouses: “Hear the wives of the commandment of God, and learn to obey your husband in silence … And do not resist your wife with your husband, but submit to them in everything, and obey your husband’s wife’s will” ³ .

Obliging the husband to teach and educate his wife, “Domostroy” indicated that if the husband “does not teach his wife… “, then” he does not rejoice about his soul “and will be” ruined in this world and in the future, and will destroy his house, “therefore,” a good husband pleases about his salvation, and punishes his wife … “In the family, in which the husband teaches his wife “with love and judicious punishment … everything will be contentious, and everything will be full” ⁴ .

Recommendations of teaching literature have been consolidated in the norms of canon law. So the church charter of Prince Yaroslav imputed to the husband to “execute” his wife if she steals from “the husband”, “steals the cage” and “if the wife will be a sorceress, a witch, or a sorcerer, or a sorceress” ⁵ .

Proverbs and sayings testify to the deep penetration into the popular consciousness of the idea of ​​the need to use violence against a wife. To preserve family happiness, they recommended that husbands begin the educational process immediately after marriage (“Hit your wife when you are young, there will be peace with old age”) and repeat the punishment regularly (“Hit your wives for lunch, for dinner again, so that the cabbage soup is hot, the porridge is butter”) ⁶ .

Tips “Domostroy”

Recommendations on the rules of punishment for a wife who does not live in a husbandly way of “teaching and punishment” are detailed in “Domostroy”.It was recommended to bring up the guilty one in private, “but people would not know and would not hear.” The severity of the punishment had to depend on the amount of guilt, the degree of “disobedience, and neglect.” In any case, the spouse was only advised to “politely beat the hands with a whip while holding them.” At the same time, the husband had to observe restraint and beat “carefully” without anger. In this case, the author believed, the punishment will reach its goal, it will be “both reasonable and painful, and scary and healthy.” Upon the fulfillment of his marital duty, the husband was obliged to “give his wife a favor, and speak up” ⁷ .

“Domostroy” even forbade “from the heart or from the rupture to” beat the wife “on the ear, neither by sight, nor under the heart with a fist or kick; could lead to serious health consequences: “blindness and deafness, and the arm and leg are dislocated, and the finger, and headache, and dental disease” ⁸ .

The cruel truth of life

In life, husbands did not always follow these “humane” advice.Numerous sources paint a dire picture of domestic violence in Russia. In a large family, not only the legal spouse, but also his closest relatives, most often the father, took an active part in the educational process. So, Matryonka Klimantova’s daughter ran away from home “so that her husband and father-in-law beat and mutilated” ⁹ . The peasant Grishka Popov complained that his son-in-law Veddenii and matchmaker Arist “not loving my daughter, beat and mutilated to death without guilt” ¹⁰ .

Sometimes other relatives also came to help my husband.Aksinya Guryeva, complaining about the cruelty of her son-in-law towards her daughter Natalya, wrote: “My son-in-law keeps … his wife, Natalya, illegally: they always beat and torture his uncle and Ivan without guilt” ¹¹ . And Daria Mazlykova accused her husband Shumilo and his brother Prokopy of violence and robbery: “And he Shumilo with that brother of his with Prokop … came into the courtyard to me, and they … they wanted to kill me with fire to death …” ¹²

There were egregious cases when his son became an accomplice of the head of the family.So, in the appearance of the Posad Ustyug man Kuzma Popov, it was indicated that “I gave Kuzemka my stepdaughter Oleksandr … for that Timofeyev …; and that Timofey and his son … they kept my stepdaughter illegally, they beat her not on business” ¹³ .

As the act material shows, educational methods were also far from those recommended by “Domostroi”. Instead of “polite” and “careful” whipping, the letters almost always said that the wife was not only beaten, but also mutilated. So, in the already mentioned petition of Grigory Popov, the author complained that he was twice forced to take home his daughter Irinka, beaten half to death, and the third time “my matchmaker Arrest… the sleepy one’s right hand was broken, and from that blow the sinews and fingers were shattered with a hook, no work could work; and his son Vedici mutilated my daughters, – she is not so sick with her hands and feet. “ ¹⁴ .

Why did they beat their wives?

What are the reasons for such a wide spread of domestic violence in Russia and its cruelty? Sometimes women gave cause for dissatisfaction. As Adam Olearius pointed out in his Description of a Trip to Muscovy, the basis of marital conflicts was the unworthy behavior of the wife herself: to her husband… Sometimes the reason is that wives get drunk more often than their husbands, or they incur the husband’s suspicion by excessive courtesy to other people’s husbands and boyfriends. Very often all these reasons are found in Russian women at the same time “ ¹⁵ .

The assembly material confirms the words of Olearius. So, the foot Cossack Semeiko Luchenin “zashol [found] … under the cage” his wife Oksinitsa, when “she was stealing [cheating on her husband] with a mounted Cossack with Pervushka Sidorov” ¹⁶ . And the streltsy foreman Nefed Sidorov complained that his wife Ontonidka “for her drunken theft had laid her pearl necklace…, but another … belly, hat and earrings, she, I don’t know where, stole without weight “ ¹⁷ .

However, much more often a woman became a victim of domestic violence without any reason on her part. Sometimes, fearing for his honor, the husband beat his wife only on suspicion of adultery. So, N.I. Kostomarov wrote that a jealous husband assigned to his wife “spies from maids and slaves, and those, wanting to counterfeit in favor of the master, often reinterpreted every step of their mistress in the other direction” ¹⁸ .

In some cases, husbands used beatings to dissolve a boring marriage by persuading their wife to become a monk. For example, Gavrilka Oleksandrov “beat and maimed his wife Tatianitsa with rosy torment to death” while she was already “powerfully pregnant” did not agree to take a haircut in the monastery. And Gavrilka himself “how he tonsured her a week later, he married another wife” ¹⁹ .

Walking husbands forced their wives to pay their debts by beatings. So, a certain Abraham, a great lover of gambling, “plays with grain, plays on himself with bondage, and plays on his wife…beats and torments: he orders the writer with him to those grain bondages “ ²⁰ . The drunkenness of husbands often became a problem for the property and safety of their wives. Ustyuzhanka Anna Osokina complained about her husband Klement, who not only drank the yard on Ustyug,” no one knows where from the little house “Annino’s dress, and” every factory of everyday life … “, so even when a drunk comes home, she is” beaten and maimed to death for a long time, and … a praiseer by murder “ ²¹ . The spread of the practice of drunken violence in the family is also evidenced by popular sayings: “They sit at home, drink and beat their wife” ²² .

Hits harder – loves more?

In Russia, there was an idea of ​​the relationship between the strength of conjugal love and beatings. As an argument, the story is usually given, contained in “Notes on Muscovite Affairs” by Sigismund Herberstein. It says that a certain German blacksmith, nicknamed Jordan, married a Russian, and his wife accused him of dislike for her on the grounds that Jordan never beat her. And as Herberstein wrote, “a little later, he beat her very severely,” and later “he practiced this practice very often,” until “finally, he broke her neck and legs” ²³ .

However, here it is worth agreeing with the opinion of Olearius, who remarked: “So that, however, Russian wives see heartfelt love in frequent beating and flogging, and in their absence – the dislike and dislike of their husbands to themselves … I did not happen to find out, and I cannot imagine that they love what nature and every creature repulses, and that they consider as a sign of love that which is a sign of anger and enmity … “ ²⁴ Numerous complaints of battered wives and their relatives addressed to representatives of secular and spiritual authority, they say that they did not see signs of any special love in the manifestation of male cruelty.

In the documentary material, numerous manifestations of unmotivated cruelty draw attention to themselves: “They beat and mutilated to death without guilt”, “beat and torture without guilt.” Most likely, the causes of domestic violence were rooted in the peculiarities of social relations in Russia during the period under review. The state was perceived by the ruler as a personal fiefdom, and all his subjects, regardless of their social status, were considered slaves of the sovereign. In a similar way, in his own family, the husband could feel himself to be a sovereign ruler who had the right to punish and pardon his wife, who was given to him for undivided power.Asserting himself at the expense of his disenfranchised spouse, the man partially compensated for his flawed social position. Therefore, many heads of families in relation to their wives were guided by the principle “I will kill and button them to death, I am free over her” ²⁵ .

Wives on the Run

As a result of the inhuman treatment, the wives fled from their families, preferring to wander “between the courtyard” to regular beatings. So, Matryona Gorbovskikh lived on the run for six years until she was returned to her husband Stenka ²⁶ .”Unknowingly kuda” after constant beating “left without weight” from the house the wife of Ivan Mokhovik Alexander. And her position, apparently, was so desperate that Alexandra’s stepfather expressed suspicion about the possible suicide of the unfortunate woman (“into the water of the flood”) ²⁷ .

If the victim of domestic violence did not yield to her husband’s demands to be tonsured or she did not have the strength and courage to leave the family, everything could end up with serious injuries, as in the case of Irinka Popova, whom her husband mutilated so that she was “sick with hands and feet.” became ²⁸ .

Sometimes the husband’s threats to kill his wife were realized in practice. Spouse, as N.N. Kostomarov, could beat his wife ten times a day, and then she died slowly ²⁹ . And he could have killed her immediately in a state of alcoholic intoxication, as did, for example, the archer Eremeev ³⁰ . There have been cases when husbands deprived their wives of their lives in a state of passion. For example, Ivashko Dolgoy “killed his wife to death because she stole from him fornication” ³¹ , and the peasant Bazhenov for “hiding from him two arshins of brown cloth” ³² .

As for the husband’s responsibility for the murder of his wife, it was distinguished by mildness and depended on the degree of guilt of the victim herself. So, the aforementioned archer Eremeev, who killed his wife for no reason, was executed by “death.” And the drunken archer, who stabbed his wife “for impolite words”, and the peasant Bazhenov – for hiding an arshin of cloth – killed their wives “not for a great cause”, but still not without fault from the dead, therefore they were sentenced to cutting off the left hand and right legs, and then bailed ³³ .The reason for the murder of his wife by Ivashka Dolgov seemed to the judges so respectful (“she stole from him fornication”) that “for the mortal murder” he, Ivashka, was “punished with a whip and given on clean bail” ³⁴ .

Thus, the Russian family of the pre-Petrine period was characterized by patriarchal-authoritarian relations, a characteristic feature of which was the domination of the husband over his wife and other household members. The spread of domestic violence was facilitated by the practically unlimited power of the husband over the wife, which often degenerated into arbitrariness, and the low level of legal responsibility for domestic violence.

<sup>1. Mironov B.N. Social history of Russia during the period of the empire (XVIII – early XX centuries). St. Petersburg, 2003. T. 1. P. 267.
2. The Bible of the books of the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. Canonical. M., 1968.S. 212.
3. Monuments of Old Russian church teaching literature. SPb., 1897. Issue. 3.P. 119.
4. Domostroy. Sylvester’s edition. SPb., 1891.S. 27-29, 38.
5. Russian legislation of the X-XX centuries. M., 1984.T. 1.P. 191.
6. Archive of historical and legal information relating to Russia, published by Nikolai Kalachov. M., 1854. Book. 2.Part 2.P. 78.
7. Domostroy. S. 37-38.
8. Ibid. P. 38.
9. Russian Historical Library. SPb., 1890. T. 12. Part 1. Stb. 858.
10. Ibid. Stb. 867.
11. Russian Historical Library. SPb., 1908.T. 25. Book. 3. Stb. 36
12. Ibid. Stb. 89.
13. Ibid. Stb. 123.
14. Russian Historical Library.T. 12. Part 1. Stb. 867.
15. Olearius A. Description of the journey to Muscovy and through Muscovy to Persia and back. SPb., 1906.S. 218-219.
16. Russian Historical Library. SPb., 1884. T. 8. Stb. 561.
17. Russian Historical Library. SPb., 1894. T. 14. Part 2. Stb. 79-80.
18. Kostomarov N.I. Essays on domestic life and customs of the Great Russian people in the 16th-17th centuries. SPb., 1860.S. 104.
19. Russian Historical Library. SPb., 1875. T. 2. Stb.947.
20. Russian Historical Library. T. 14. Part 2. Stb. 740.
21. Russian Historical Library. T. 25. Book. 3. Stb. 305.
22. Archive of historical and legal information relating to Russia. P. 94.
23. Herberstein S. Notes on Muscovite affairs. SPb., 1908.S. 73-74.
24. Olearius A. Decree. op. S. 219-220.
25. Russian Historical Library. T. 14. Part 2. Stb. 740.
26. Russian Historical Library. T. 12. Part 1. Stb.858-860.
27. Russian Historical Library. T. 25. Stb. 123.
28. Russian Historical Library. T. 12. Part 1. Stb. 867-874.
29. Kostomarov N.I. Decree. op. P. 106.
30. Soloviev S.M. History of Russia since ancient times. M., 1991. Book. Vii. T. 13-14. P. 127.
31. Complete collection of laws of the Russian Empire. SPb., 1830.T. 1.S. 586.
32. Soloviev S.M. Decree. op. P. 127.
33. Ibid.
34. Complete collection of laws of the Russian Empire.Vol. 1. S. 586.</sup>

Ryazan | In St. Petersburg, a woman beat her children with a stick and kept them on a chain

In St. Petersburg, a woman beat her children with a stick and kept them on a chain

A criminal case was initiated under paragraphs a, d of part 2 of article 117 of the RF Criminal Code. The woman was arrested, and she will be charged in the near future.

In St. Petersburg, a woman beat her children with a stick and kept them on a chain. This was reported by the press service of the regional Investigative Directorate of the TFR.

A 31-year-old resident of St. Petersburg, for educational purposes, beat her eight-year-old son and six-year-old daughter with a wooden stick and hands. The woman also tied the children on a chain in the corridor of her apartment on Energetikov Avenue and starved them.

A criminal case was initiated under paragraphs a, d of part 2 of article 117 of the RF Criminal Code. The woman was arrested, and soon she will be charged.

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90,000 Eliseev and Garanichev were removed from the World Cup stage in the Russian national team. Biathletes blame sticks and isotonic drinks

The first and second stages of the Biathlon World Cup are held on the same track in Östersund, Sweden, but not everyone will make it to the next races in the Russian men’s team.SBR President Viktor Maygurov announced that Matvey Eliseev and Yevgeny Garanichev were temporarily disconnected from the main team.

“This is a planned rotation in the Olympic season, which both I and the senior coaches have talked about more than once. It is too early to give any categorical assessments. These are just the first races of the season, ”said Maygurov. He noted that the decision was made jointly with the coaches, and Matvey and Evgeny will leave the location of the national team today, November 29.

Ostersund

Without Garanichev and show.What to expect from the 2nd biathlon stage?

YESTERDAY At 16:22

Garanichev and Eliseev will go to Shushen for the IBU Cup stage. Instead of them, Alexander Povarnitsyn and Vasily Tomshin were raised to the main team. Povarnitsyn initially qualified for the World Cup through test starts in Tyumen. But he did not have enough qualifying points to participate in the main races, and the coaches sent Alexander to the Norwegian Shushen.

Tomshin also showed himself well in the second team of Russia. He twice ran to the podium in combination (bronze in the sprint, gold in the pursuit) and was naturally promoted to the World Cup.

What kicked the two veterans of the national team, in general, is understandable. 33-year-old Garanichev made Östersund laugh when he forgot his ski poles and was late for the sprint start. Eliseev, at the same distance, came to the finish line 78th – he made only one mistake, but lost to the leader almost three minutes.

Evgeny Garanichev, Russia, stage of the 2021/22 World Cup in Östersund

Photo: Getty Images

When asked about the failed race, Matvey said that he had missed six weeks of training, and suddenly blamed everything on the isotonic, which was given in the national team.“The drink was due to the soluble tablets, so the composition was defective. And then there were no others at the training camp. There was a cumulative effect, by the end of the training camp I was simply put down. And for 1.5 months I had a terrible biochemistry, “- said the ex-second number of the national team on the air of” Match TV “(quote from the website Sports.ru).

Senior coach of Russian biathletes Yuri Kaminsky was surprised by Eliseev’s explanation. “This is the first time I have heard about the isotonic story, I don’t know anything about it. I can’t remember what happened at the training camp in Rybinsk.He probably confused this with the collection in Toksovo. He could not train there, because at the first training camp in Belmeken he went overboard. When he was stopped, he did not want to, he said that everything was fine, ”Kaminsky answered on the air of“ Match ”(quoted by Sports.ru).

Matvey Eliseev, Russia, stage of the 2021/22 World Cup in Östersund

Photo: Getty Images

The second stage of the World Cup in Östersund starts this Thursday, December 2. We believe that at least this time the Russian national team will be given normal restorative drinks, and before the start they will be handed ski poles on time.It seems that only this hinders the Russian biathletes, and not at all themselves.

Historically, things are not going very well for the Russian national team in Ostersund. Biathletes have already made an epic mess at the Swedish stage of the World Cup, but the main fail of the weekend happened not with Eliseev and Garanichev, but with Eduard Latypov. He went to the wrong finish corridor and lost his medal due to the wrong route. Sources: RBU website, Sports.ru

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“Not mentality, but education.