"When Pregnancy Tests Were Toads"

"As a young woman in the 1950s, Audrey Peattie injected urine into toads every day....Audrey’s job involved processing urine specimens for use in the Xenopus test, also called the ‘Hogben test’ in honour of one of its inventors, the British physiologist Lancelot Hogben. A hormone found in the urine of pregnant women – today known as human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) – can induce the female Xenopus toad to lay hundreds of eggs. The Hogben test involved injecting a toad with urine and seeing whether it laid eggs (a positive reaction)."

From Wellcome History