A cleric, physician, and medical humanist, William Bullein wrote several medical works that circulated widely in Tudor England. He was particularly attracted to the dialogue form, using it for instructional purposes in his first two treatises and turning it into an original work of fiction in A Dialogue against the Fever Pestilence (1564), the first literary treatment of the plague in sixteenth-century England.

Little is known about the early part of Bullein's life. He was born in the region known as the Isle of Ely, in Cambridgeshire--probably between 1520 and 1530-but neither his date of birth nor his education has been established. On 9 June 1550 he became rector of Blaxhall in Suffolk, resigning the position by 5 November 1554. Subsequently he practiced medicine, first in the counties of Durham and Northumberland, and later in London: on 15 June 1560 he leased a house and garden in the parish of St. Giles, Cripplegate.

Bullein wrote his...