William Bullein

Writer

• Born: Between 1520 and 1530
• Birthplace: Isle of Ely, Cambridgeshire, England
• Died: January 7, 1576
• Place of death: England

Biography

William Bullein was born on the Isle of Ely between 1520 and 1530. No data survives regarding his education, but the dedication of his Bullein’s Bulwarke of Defence Againste all Sicknes, Sornes, and Woundes to “R. R.” might indicate that he studied under Robert Recorde at Oxford University or Cambridge University. He became rector of Blaxhall in Suffolk in 1550 but resigned because of his fervent protestantism, which was an unpopular position under the reign of Queen Mary. He practiced medicine in the north of England and was physician to Sir Thomas Hilton, Baron of Hilton and Captain of Tynemouth Castle, and to Sir Richard Alie, the builder of the walls of Berwick.

Bullein took up where Andrew Boorde left off as a writer of medical texts for the laity. The Gouvernement of Healthe—which was subsequently reprinted as A Newe Booke of Physick—is a dialogue that preaches moderation and stresses the importance of good diet and regular bathing; it also counsels against excessive leeching. Bullein married Thomas Hilton’s widow Agnes in the early 1560’s and in doing so incurred the wrath of Thomas’s brother William, who accused Bullein of Thomas’s murder. After he was officially exonerated and freed from prison, Bullein went to London in 1560. He leased a house on Grub Street, in the parish of St. Giles Cripplegate, where his brother Robert was rector. He lost most of possessions en route in a shipwreck, including the manuscript of a four-part book on medicines which had to be rewritten as Bullein’s Bulwarke of Defence Againste all Sicknes, Sornes, and Woundes.

The Bulwarke’s first part, The Booke of Simples, deals with the medical uses of plants. It is based on Bullein’s understanding of bodily humours. Apostumations and wounds, a hymn of praise to surgeons, is followed by a diagram of skeleton that was supposed to have been part of a volume titled Anatomie, which Bullein did not have the means to reconstruct. The Booke of Compoundis deals with curative recipes—pills, syrups, lozenges and ointments—and was the first English text to import the “chemical medicine” pioneered by Paracelsus. The Booke of the Use of Sick Men and Medicins deals with such subjects as sleep, fear and other disturbances of the mind.

Bullein followed the Bulwarke with A Comfortable Regiment Against the Pleurisie, which offers a history of the disease—which he attributes to drinking water—since Biblical times. A Dialogue Both Pleasaunte and Pietifull Wherein is a Goodly Regiment Against the Fever Pestilence with a Consolacion and Comfort Against Death is much more interesting, comprising a series of dialogues that tends toward a novel; it describes the flight from a plague-stricken London. The book’s initially tentative tendencies toward symbolism and allegory eventually erupt into a fabulous, satirical traveller’s tale narrated by a character named Mendax. The tale includes accounts of Mandragata, where headless men have eyes in their breasts; Selenetide, inhabited by egg-laying women; Prester John’s kingdom, and the allegedly ideal state of Nodnol in the land of Taerg Natrib, situated beyond the Americas.

Bullein was married again in 1566 to Anne Doffield; their only daughter married Sir Thomas Ridley, a member of parliament and the headmaster of Eton. Bullein died on January 7, 1576 and was buried with his brother; John Foxe was later interred in the same grave.