Together with her older sisters Luci and Maud, she travelled to England in 1933, where she joined the laboratory of Joshua Harold Burn at the Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain, University of London.

She remained as Burn's assistant until 1946, when she was appointed university demonstrator and lecturer, and began to conduct her own research independently.

From 1950 until she retired in 1971 she led a flourishing research group exploring the physiology of smooth muscle, an area that had hitherto been neglected.

During World War I (WWI; 1914–1918) Edith and her two older sisters moved to The Hague, the Netherlands to stay with their uncle, the prominent Royal banker Jacobus Henricus Kann.

[2] Although she became a proficient piano player, she decided to study medicine instead of music, a fact that surprised her teacher as Edith had shown real talent.

While living in Berlin, the rise of the Nazi party began was a concern of Bülbring due to her Jewish ancestry.

She was dismissed from the hospital, as it was made illegal for people of Jewish background to hold university or other professional posts.

She has been quoted saying: "Using them [smooth muscles] for assays and always finding them totally incomprehensible; I just could not understand their behavior: why they would contract one time and relax the next hour to the same dose, at the same temperature, in the same conditions, and so forth.

"[2] In 1953 Gustav Born joined Bülbring in her work initiating a collaboration that became the origin of her smooth muscle group.

She always showed great ability to obtaining funds for her work, creating relationships with charities, councils and industry partners.

The techniques developed in her laboratory led to increasing knowledge of the physiology of smooth muscle, and the activities of the many scientists who spent time working with her spread her interest and enthusiasm for the in-depth study of this type of tissues all over the world.

[2] Her multiple successes were recognised widely for which she received a number of awards, including The Schmiedeberg-Plakette of the Deutsche Pharmakologische Gesellschaft, The Wellcome Gold Medal in Pharmacology, and honorary degrees in Groningen, Leuven and Homburg (Saar).