First Edition in a Contemporary Binding
Bulleins bulwarke of defece againste all sicknes, sornes, and woundes. that dooe daily assaulte mankinde, which bulwarke is kepte with Hillarius the Gardiner, Health the Phisician, and their chyrugian, to help the wounded soldiors. Gathered and practised fro the moste worthie learned, bothe old and newe: to the greate comforte of mankinde.
London: John Kyngston, 1562.
Full Description:
BULLEIN, William. Bulleins bulwarke of defece againste all sicknes, sornes, and woundes. that dooe daily assaulte mankinde, which bulwarke is kepte with Hillarius the Gardiner, Health the Phisician, and their chyrugian, to help the wounded soldiors. Gathered and practised fro the moste worthie learned, bothe old and newe: to the greate comforte of mankinde London: John Kyngston, 1562.
First edition. Four parts in one folio volume (11 1/4 x 7 3/8 inches; 283 x 187 mm). Three with separate title-pages, and all with separate collation. Contents: Part I. The booke of simples; Part II. A little dialogue, betwene twoo men, the one called Sorenes, and the other Chyrurgi: concerning apostumacions [with special half-title]: Part III. The booke of compoundes: Part IV. The booke of the use of sicke men, and medicens [with special half-title, containing a portrait of the author]. [4], xc, 10]; [1], xlviii, [4]; lxxxiii, [2] leaves. Includes three pages of illustrations of herbs, three full page human figures and a keyed human skelton. With the portrait of the author on the half-title of the last book. Title, author list and final leaf (part of table) all supplied in high-quality facsimile. The copy collated by Pollard and Redgrave also had the title page in facsimile. We could find no complete copy at auction.
Contemporary dark brown blind-paneled calf. Boards with central device blind-stamped double-eagles. Upper two inches of joints cracked and some cracking to head top part of spine. Light worming to rear cover and spine. Not front or rear psatedowns. Title, author list and final leaf (part of table) all supplied in high-quality facsimile. First seven leaves with restoration to outer margins. Smaller bits of restoration to six other leaves (none affecting text). Some contemporary marginalia. Collation note in pen on rear blank. Scattered spotting and dust soiling. Overall, a very good copy of this very scarce title in a contemporary binding.
"In 1562, he produced Bullein’s Bulwarke of Defence againste Sicknes, Sorues, etc., obviously modelling his title on Elyot’s successful Castel of Helth. Bullein’s attitude to his subject can best be expressed in the words of his own dedication:
'I beyng a child of the Commonwealthe am bounde unto my mother, that is, the lande, in whom I am borne: to pleasure it with any good gift that it hath pleased God to bestowe upon me, not to this ende to instructe the learned but to helpe the ignoraunt, that thei maie resort to this little Bulwarke'.The book is divided into four separate treatises, the second in the form of a dialogue, and it contains what he had learnt from travel and study about herbs, surgery, the cultivation of health and the practical part of a physician’s work. But the scholars who were carrying on this work of enlightenment had many other things of which to tell the people besides remedies for their bodies. Although the College of Physicians had been incorporated as early as 1518, the position of medical men was far from established. Bullein ascribes their low estate to the impostures and frauds of empirics and mountebanks. Here, again, the curtain is lifted which hides the low life of the Middle Ages, and, in a passage of bitter eloquence, we hear of the escaped criminals, idle labourers and runaway serving-men that sell worthless or poisonous drugs, practise witchcraft and necromancy, doing more harm, according to Bullein, than limitours, pardoners or vagabonds. The whole work has many digressions and touches of autobiography. But the personal note is sounded to most effect when the physician who had undergone the insult of a prosecution for murder and was then languishing in prison for debt, utters the lament beginning: “Truely there is none other purgyng place or purgatorie but this”—not only in bodily suffering but in anguish of soul, continuall thought, sometyme wishyng that Death might conquere life, broken hart and vexed spirite, full of sondrie inwarde affections and alteracions of minde, small rest or quietnes, sorowful for the death of kindred, or frendes, being changed into bitter enemies, whiche is a greate plague."
NLM/Durling 778. STC 4033. Wellcome 1149. Not in Garrison and Morton or Norman.
HBS 69636.
$9,500.
Price: $9,500.00
Item #69636