These cites are really good & I'm off to find Pauly's paper.  My
Post-Repeal Eclipse in Knowledge About the Harmful Effects of Alcohol,
Addiction 88:729-744 also covers this and includes a quote from a paper in
JAMA in which a physician "diagnoses" FAS in the infant that is so
prominently flying out of its mother's arms in Hogarth's Gin Lane.  This
physician notes that the child's facial features are depicted differently
from those of other children in Hogarth's prints.  There are, I agree,
problems in applying current terminology to historical evidence, but it
does seem to be a reasonable line of historical inquiry.  For example,
Benjamin Rush's textbook of medicine describes a form of "gout in the
extremities which seems to be produced exclusively by ardent spirits, and
that is a burning of the palms of the hands, and soles of the feet."  Is
this gout or peripheral nerve disease from vitamin deficiency?
 
Interestingly, Rush does not list FAS or anything related to maternal
drinking in his famous temperance pamphlet, though he does managage to
cover most of the medical consequenses of very heavy drinking (see my
Benjamin Rush's Campaign Against Hard Drinking, American Journal of Public
Health, 83:273-281, 1993).  This is significant in that Rush was such a
keen observer.