[2] Born February 5, 1856, in Evanston, Illinois, or “the great Methodist mecca of the northwest,” Bushnell's roots in Christianity were well established from the beginning.

[2] She grew up in the midst of a religious transition; Methodists in her community were striving to be faithful in every area of their lives while simultaneously craving popular success.

[3] After obtaining her undergraduate and graduate degrees, Bushnell initially planned on entering postgraduate study but was persuaded by her home church to go to China as a medical missionary in 1879.

In response to her friend's thriving practice, Dr. Ella Gilchrist came out to China to assist Bushnell, but the hot summers proved to be intolerable.

She noticed with indignation that the Chinese Bible changed Paul's fellows from women to men, and after that vowed to devote a portion of her life solely to "a meticulous examination of male bias that had corrupted the English text.

"[2] While it is not confirmed, many sources claim that Bushnell established a pediatric hospital sponsored by the Woman's Mission Board of the Methodist Episcopal Church.

After disappointment with their recently established American medical practice, the pair joined the Women's Christian Temperance Union, or the WCTU.

"The largest women's organization of its time," the WCTU championed the causes of families and wives and campaigned to outlaw alcohol, believed to be the root of evil.

[4] After she succeeded in exposing the prostitution system as unjust, many attempts were made to slander her and take her words out of context, defaming her for creating "cruel lies.

[6] Frustrated by her newfound notoriety and convinced that her status as somewhat of a celebrity distracted people from reform, Bushnell became a global missionary.

Unlike Bushnell, Andrew “struggled to shed her prejudice against ‘fallen women’” and for a time had difficulty in interacting with prostitutes the pair encountered.

At the time of Bushnell and Andrew’s visit in the early 1890s, there were around 100 military cantonments in India under the control and ownership of Great Britain.

Women suspected of being prostitutes or carrying venereal diseases could be arrested and sent to lock hospitals to suffer a series of traumatic experiences described by Bushnell and Andrews as follows: To these Lock Hospitals the women were obliged to go periodically (generally once a week for an indecent examination, to see whether every part of the body was free from any trace of diseases likely to spread from them to the soldiers, as the result of immoral relations.

When a woman was found diseased, she was detained in the hospital until cured; when found healthy she was given a ticket of license to practise fornication and was returned to the chakla for that purpose.The concern was with the potential contamination of British troops rather than the potential spread of foreign diseases among the native population, a point which Bushnell and Andrews emphasize.

Since the commanding officer of a cantonment has the authority to remove anyone from the garrison at any time for any reason, the women had to step carefully and be sure not to raise suspicion.

[12] In full agreement with the Auckland WCTU's efforts to push for the repeal of the 1869 Contagious Diseases Act, Dr. Bushnell "denounced the mocking conventionality of society which brands women and exculpates men.

"[6] In another passage from her book, she courageously wrote: If women must suffer domestic, legislative and ecclesiastical disabilities because Eve sinned, then must the Church harbor the appalling doctrine that Christ did not atone for all sin, because so long as the Church maintains these disabilities, the inevitable conclusion in the average mind will be the same as Tertullian’s - God's verdict on the (female) sex still holds good and the sex's guilt must still hold also.Bushnell died on January 26, 1946, only a few days before her 91st birthday.