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Predictor: The First Home Pregnancy Test

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 July 2020

Jesse Olszynko-Gryn Open the ORCID record for Jesse Olszynko-Gryn [Opens in a new window]
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Abstract

This essay uses Predictor, the first home pregnancy test, to reexamine the doctor-patient relationship in Britain in the 1960s and 1970s, a tumultuous period associated with permissiveness, women's liberation, and the erosion of medical authority. It shows how the rise of self-testing contributed to a realignment of the power dynamics among women, doctors, and pharmacists. It argues that the humble home pregnancy test kit merits a place—alongside the birth control pill and abortion law reform—in histories of health consumerism and reproductive choice in the twentieth century.

Type
Original Manuscript
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 59 , Issue 3 , July 2020 , pp. 638 - 642
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Copyright
Copyright © The North American Conference on British Studies, 2020

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References

1 All above quotations are from the insert of a 1971 test kit. Courtesy of Meg Crane.

2 Olszynko-Gryn, Jesse, “The Demand for Pregnancy Testing: The Aschheim-Zondek Reaction, Diagnostic Versatility, and Laboratory Services in 1930s Britain,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 47, Part B (2014): 233–47CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

3 Jesse Olszynko-Gryn, “Pregnancy Testing in Britain, c.1900–67: Laboratories, Animals and Demand from Doctors, Patients and Consumers” (PhD diss., University of Cambridge, 2014), 229.

4 Anderson, Stuart, “Community Pharmacy and Sexual Health in 20th Century Britain,” Pharmaceutical Journal 266, no. 7129 (6 January 2001): 23–29Google Scholar; Mechen, Ben, “‘Closer Together’: Durex Condoms and Contraceptive Consumerism in 1970s Britain,” in Perceptions of Pregnancy from the Seventeenth to the Twentieth Century, ed. Evans, Jennifer and Meehan, Ciara (Basingstoke, 2016), 213–36Google Scholar.

5 Olszynko-Gryn, “Pregnancy Testing in Britain,” 240.

6 Moira Keenan, “Do-It-Yourself Pregnancy Test,” Times (London), 15 September 1971, 16.

7 “Survey of Women Using Pregnancy Test,” Pharmaceutical Journal, 30 January 1971; 6, 13, 20, 27 February 1971; 6 and 13 March 1971.

8 The National Archives, MH 156/633, Mr. A. B. Giles, undated report to the Lane Committee on the Working of the Abortion Act 1967.

9 Jesse Olszynko-Gryn, “The Feminist Appropriation of Pregnancy Testing in 1970s Britain,” Women's History Review 28, no. 6 (2019): 869–94.

10 Consumers’ Association, Sex with Health: The “Which?” Guide to Contraception, Abortion and Sex-Related Diseases (London, 1974), 54.

11 “Pregnancy Testing,” British Medical Journal, no. 5785 (1971): 444–45.

12 The National Archives, MH 156/633, report by W. G. Robertson, 20 August 1976.

13 The National Archives, MH 156/633, Girl about Town, 16 June 1976, n.p.

14 “Large Increase in Predictor Sales,” Chemist and Druggist, no. 5058 (1977): 371.

15 Townsend, Sue, The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole (London, 1984), 23Google Scholar.

16 Olszynko-Gryn, Jesse, “Thin Blue Lines: Clearblue and the Drama of Pregnancy Testing in British Cinema and Television,” British Journal for the History of Science 50, no. 3 (Sept. 2017): 495–520CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

17 L'Aimable, Guy, “Supreme Survivor,” Chemist and Druggist, no. 6049 (1996): 256–57Google Scholar.