During the 1920s, a new diagnostic method – tubal insufflation – was introduced into gynaecological practice. It was used to assess the patency or blockage of the fallopian tubes, a question central to the diagnosis of female infertility. Developed by I. C. Rubin in the years before 1919, the method spread quickly. This paper will look at the process in which tubal insufflation developed into a standard procedure. Geographically, the paper concentrates on Germany where the method was widely discussed amongst gynaecologists. Several modified versions of the Rubin test and the relevant equipment were developed amongst which a rather simple apparatus known as the “Tubenschneutzer” was especially successful.

As the paper will show, tubal insufflation was almost immediately accepted on a theoretical basis but proved difficult in practice. The new device led to diagnostic results which were very difficult to interpret. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, doctors compared the results produced by tubal insufflation with the information gathered by other diagnostic means. Statistics published in medical papers and dissertations showed that the prognostic value of tubal insufflation was, indeed, limited.

Using an approach inspired by ANT, the paper reconstructs the process by which tubal insufflation developed into a standard procedure by looking at (1) the instruments used in tubal insufflation (a bricolage of already existing instruments) and the interaction between doctors and bodies in which they were modified so as to “work”, (2) at the processes of communication and knowledge production within the medical community and (3) at the interaction between doctors and patients. Based on case records from the university hospital of Tübingen, the paper will ask how the demands and expectations of infertility patients contributed to the stabilisation of this new diagnostic method.