It is perhaps ironic that the Victorian doctor best known today for his somewhat stereotypical views on female sexual passivity should also be the author of an equally influential text on prostitution. When the venereologist William Acton published his treatise on prostitution in 1857, he was contributing to a debate that had been running for decades. Like his predecessors, Acton reiterated a familiar body of information: the numbers of recorded prostitutes, the causes of prostitution, and the existing measures for its amelioration or prevention. Acton's work differed from earlier efforts, however, in advancing a sustained call for state and medical intervention in recognizing and regulating prostitution. Acton was an influential medical figure in the arguments which preceded the institution of the Contagious Diseases Acts of 1864, 1866 and 1869, and his work offered a different type of engagement with the existing mythologies and representations of prostitution. These Acts entailed the registration and compulsory medical inspection of prostitutes in selected garrison towns in England, which further involved periods of compulsory hospitalization until venereal infections were cured. What makes Acton particularly interesting is that his key work on prostitution offers a dialogic window on the interplay between public debate, legislation and medical opinion.