Gin Lane
From a historical standpoint, Gin Lane has a unique past. Its creator, Hogarth, was an immensely popular English artist well known for his moral and satirical engravings. One of his most famous works was Gin Lane, which was intended to be a horrifying foil to his Beer Street. While on Beer Street the citizens of England are pleasantly fat, contented and engaged in beneficial economic activities. On Gin Lane the scene is different. Gin, unlike ale or beer, was seen as a dangerous threat to English society: an all-consuming addictive pleasure. Unable to give up the rapture of gin, it was believed the poor would waste away, neglecting their families and work, until they were dead or driven mad by insane longing for it. Gin, personified as Madam Genevra, was also a gendered beverage; it is no coincidence that Hogarth's etching centers a woman, specifically a mother about to accidentally kill her child. Gin was one of the first spiritous beverages readily available to most women in public settings, and its popularity spurred fears that gin would destroy the family through its corruption of the mother. It was seen as a dangerous disease that threatened society, and a beverage that in its extreme pleasure would only lead to suffering and pain.
Three verses are written below the engraving, in the tradition of art with written morals. Hogarth argues that the numbness that alcohol brings makes gin "a deadly Draught [that] steals our life away". Instead of the victims directly feeling pain, pain is inflicted upon them through their disconnection with the surrounding world. While the central woman is smiling, corpses litter the street, people pawn their possessions, and her own child takes a deadly fall. None are killed by the drink directly— even the corpse in the corner looks like he died from starvation— but the drinkers' numbness to reality steals their happiness and vitality— their life— as well as pain.
Gin Lane's dealing with the effects of alcohol and the numbness that it causes its abusers can also be described in terms of the repercussions alcohol has on the nervous system. This includes the blocking of neurotransmitter receptors. In order for our body to have any sort of physical feelings, action potentials need to be able to get to the appropriate nerves by getting through gaps in the different cells called synapses. To do this the body releases calcium neurotransmitters. Alcohol, such as the gin we know the people in this piece have been indulging in, is molecularly made up of ethanol. Ethanol does a neat trick where it binds to the receptor neurotransmitters, therefore inhibiting any sort of pain signal from being felt. This numbing makes drinking the positive and addictive experiences shown here.