Publisher's Synopsis
Zerobabel Endecott, the author or compiler of the following collection of medical recipes, was the son of Governor John Endecott by his second wife Elizabeth Gibson, and was born about 1635. Mr. Endecott was married twice, his second wife being the daughter of Gov. John Winthrop and the widow of Rev. Antipas Newman. Where he received such medical education as sufficed for his time is not known, but undoubtedly he followed the custom that prevailed until the last century and read medicine in the home of some physician living in the Bay Colony and accompanied him while visiting patients. His brother John also was a chirurgeon, as appears from a bill preserved in the Massachusetts Archives, where under date of 1668 he charged five shillings for "a Vomit and atendans" on one John Clarke, "weak and sike by reason of a scurvy and a dropsy." The public records disclose but little information of Zerobabel Endecott. In 1659, with his brother John and Daniel Samons, he was fined in the Quarterly Court for excessive drinking, a not uncommon weakness in those days. In 1665 he was ensign of the military company in Salem, and on two or more occasions he served upon the jury. In 1676 he was impaneled on a jury of inquest upon the body of one Jacob Goodale, a servant of Giles Corey, who died suddenly. It appeared that the man was "almost a Natural Fool." The body was badly bruised, and Mr. Endecott performed a post mortem examination and found "dodders of Blood" about the man's heart. Mr. Endecott lived on the easterly side of what is now Washington Street, Salem, near the corner of Church street, and during the latter part of his life on "the orchard farm" in what is now Danversport. At his death in 1684 he bequeathed to his son John, who also was a physician and who died in England, "all my Instruments and books both of physicke and chirurgery." The inventory of the estate shows "a cafe of lances, 2 Razors, a box of Instruments, 10 bookes in folio, 16 in quarto, a saw with fix Instruments for a chirurgion and a chest of bookes & writings" in which undoubtedly lay the little volume of recipes here printed.
