ABSTRACT
The possible teratogenic effects of alcohol on the developing fetus have been suspected for centuries and admonitions against pregnant women drinking alcohol or strong drink date back to biblical times. It was recognized during the ‘‘gin epidemic’’ (a period between 1720 and 1751 in which alcohol consumption increased because of the low price of gin) in London that the children of women who were drinking distilled liquors were born weak and sickly (1). In 1899, Sullivan, describing a controlled, patient-matched study of the offspring of women inmates of Liverpool prison, observed: ‘‘Maternal inebriety is a condition peculiarly unfavorable to the vitality and to the normal development of offspring. Its
gravity in this respect is considerably greater than that of paternal alcoholism. (There is) a tendency to stillbirths and abortions, and a high rate of epilepsy in the surviving children. This influence of alcohol is . . . in part due to a direct toxic action on the embryo’’ (2). This study was largely ignored, and there is little evidence to suggest that historical figures or physicians knew about the direct toxic effects of alcohol on the developing fetus. The first description in the modern medical literature of a distinctly recognizable pattern of malformation associated with maternal alcohol abuse was reported by Lemoine et al. (3) in France in 1968 and independently by Jones et al. (4) in the United States in 1973. Since that time, substantial progress has been made in developing specific criteria for defining and diagnosing this condition.
