Woman of the Century/Kate Bushnell

BUSHNELL, Miss Kate, physician and evangelist, born in Peru, Ill., 5th February, 1856. She is a descendant of a prominent family that traces its ancestors to John Rogers, the Smithfield martyr. She received a public-school education in her native State and attended the Northwestern University, in Evanston, III. Selecting the medical profession, she became n private pupil of Dr. James S. Jewell, the noted specialist in nerve diseases. Later she finished her medical education in the Chicago Woman's Medical College, was graduated M. D., and became a resident physician in the Hospital for Women and Children. She then went to China, and for nearly three years remained in that country as a medical missionary. Returning to America, she established herself as a physician in Denver, Col. In 1885, complying with earnest requests from the leaders, Dr. Bushnell gave up her practice and entered the field as an evangelist in the social-purity department of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. It was she who laid the foundation of the Anchorage Mission in Chicago, Ill., an institution which has done great good for abandoned women, giving over five- thousand lodgings to women in one year. In 1888 Dr. Bushnell visited the dens and stockades in northern Wisconsin, where women were held in debasing slavery. That undertaking was heroic in its nature, for she took her life in her hand when she dated the opposition of those she encountered. Fearless and undaunted, she finished her investigations, and her report made to the Woman's Christian Temperance Union startled the reading public by its revelations of the utter depravity she had witnessed. As a public speaker Dr. Bushnell is graceful, eloquent and earnest, and as a writer she is well known in her special field. This combination KATE BUSHNELL. of the woman and the physician, the orator and the author has made her the choice of the World's Woman's Christian Temperance Union for carrying the gospel of the white ribbon to foreign lands. In 1891 she left Chicago to circumnavigate the earth in the interests of humanity, representing over 500,000 women. Dr. Bushnefl went as an evangelist to organize, instruct and encourage. She carried with her the "polyglot petition," a paper that was intended to l>e signed by at least two-million persons, representing a general protest against legalizing sale of alcoholics and of opium, and it is to be presented to every government on both hemispheres.