The effects of drinking on offspring: an historical survey of the American and British literature.

Current research on the effects on offspring of drinking during pregnancy has revived interest in an extremely old topic. Observations made during England's Gin Epidemic (1720-1750) were followed by warnings of 19th-century medical writers that parental drinking could damage the fetus. Many concurring studies were reported in the medical literature from 1865 to 1920. Research interest declined during Prohibition, and authorities later discounted the previous work. Recently a relationship between maternal drinking and abnormal morphogenesis has been again described.