friedman test
Noun: A specific, historical biological pregnancy test. The test involves injecting a sample of a woman's urine into an unmated female rabbit. After a period, the rabbit's ovaries are examined. The presence of corpora lutea (structures that form after an egg is released) in the rabbit's ovaries indicates that the woman is pregnant.
The term is used to refer to this specific, now-obsolete medical procedure. It is primarily used in historical or educational contexts when discussing the evolution of pregnancy testing. * The Friedman test was an early 20th-century method for detecting pregnancy hormones. * Before modern kits, doctors sometimes relied on the Friedman test for confirmation.
- The test is named after the physician Maurice H. Friedman.
- It is an example of a bioassay, a test that uses a living organism (in this case, a rabbit) to measure the biological activity of a substance (pregnancy hormones, specifically human chorionic gonadotropin or hCG).
- The phrase "the rabbit died" became a popular, though inaccurate, euphemism for a positive pregnancy test result, originating from this procedure. The test required the rabbit to be killed for ovary examination, but the rabbit's death was not the indicator of the result.
- Rabbit test: A common informal name for the Friedman test and similar bioassays that used rabbits or other animals (like mice or frogs).
- Aschheim-Zondek test: An earlier pregnancy test that used mice or rats, based on a similar principle.
- Bioassay: The general category of tests that use a living organism to detect or measure a substance.
- Rabbit test (informal/historical)
This term has only one specific meaning: the historical medical procedure described. It is not used in any other general or figurative sense. Its usage today is almost exclusively historical.
- pregnancy test that involves injecting some of the woman's urine into an unmated female rabbit and later examining the ovaries of the rabbit; presence of corpora lutea indicates that the woman is pregnant