Infants and Gin Mania in 18th-century London

Abstract

A study of Hogarth's engraving, Gin Lane, highlights the fact that alcoholic addiction parents results not only in the fetal alcohol syndrome, but also in other types of infant abuse. Physical trauma, loss of parents, neglect, and malnutrition are all depicted. There is the strong implication that the causes of such infant abuse, and thus the prevention, lie largely in socioeconomic and cultural fields, rather than in that of medical science.