author
William W. Sanger
1819–1872
A New York physician with a reformer’s eye, he is best remembered for a wide-ranging 1858 study of prostitution that drew on hospital work, official investigations, and years of research. His writing offers a revealing glimpse into how medicine and social policy met in nineteenth-century America.
1 Audiobook
The History of Prostitution: Its Extent, Causes, and Effects throughout the World
by William W. Sanger
About the author
Born in Connecticut in 1819, William Wallace Sanger studied medicine first in Wheeling and then in New York, graduating from the College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1846. He went on to work at Bellevue Hospital and later became the first resident physician at Blackwell’s Island Hospital, building a career in the fast-changing medical world of New York City.
He is chiefly known for The History of Prostitution (1858), an ambitious and controversial book that examined prostitution in New York and placed it in a broader historical setting. The work grew out of an official inquiry and helped establish his reputation as a careful, data-minded observer, even though modern readers may also notice the limits and assumptions of its era.
Sanger died in New York City on May 8, 1872. Today he is remembered less as a literary stylist than as a physician-author whose work captures the concerns, methods, and moral debates of nineteenth-century urban reform.