Reflecting on her years of anti-vice activism on behalf of the World Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WWCTU), American missionary and physician Kate Bushnell (1855–1946) commented:

Bushnell dedicated thirty years of her life laying bare those invisible cords that spanned the globe. As much as ideas, technology, people, and material goods circumnavigated the globe, so too did troubling habits such as alcohol abuse, drug addiction, and sex trafficking and with these, the anti-vice movements sought to combat the degenerative impact of excessive consumption.

Born at the apogee of the steam age and dying at the birth of the atomic age, Bushnell was well positioned to comment on the developments she observed, critiqued, and tried to change. Roaming the world as a “peripatetic puritan” Bushnell had faith that God would provide for her needs, that the British Empire could reform its sinful practices, and that men could be convinced to stop exploiting women and treat them as equals.

Raised in Illinois, Bushnell attended Northwestern University as one of the first women admitted. She studied medicine, becoming a practicing physician by 1879. After graduation, the Women's Mission Board of the Methodist Episcopal Church dispatched Bushnell to Jiujiang, China, where she served as a medical missionary until 1882. Bushnell returned to the United States, where she practiced medicine in Denver, Colorado, for four years before moving to Chicago to provide medical aid and other social services to Chicago's most dejected, despised, and detested population – the city's prostitutes.