William W. Sanger

William W. Sanger (1819–1872) was an American physician who served as resident physician of the penitentiary hospital on Blackwell's Island in New York and later as a public health official in the city. Commissioned by the governors of the almshouses to report on prostitution, he produced The History of Prostitution (1858), a survey of the subject from antiquity to his own day combined with a statistical study of two thousand women confined on the island. It was the first large investigation of its kind in the United States and argued for medical regulation rather than suppression. Sanger's other work was in hospital administration and sanitary reform.