ABSTRACT
The epitaph of Pieter van Foreest (1521-97) ran: Hippocrates batavus si fuit ille fuit – ‘if there had been a Batavian Hippocrates, it was him’. The line indicates how, at the end of his life, Van Foreest’s fame had acquired an overwhelming status, although he did not aspire to an academic career and had only started to publish late in life. Even his travelling had not been exceptionally extensive for his generation of medical doctors. As far as is known, he did all his long-distance travelling before 1546, during the first 25 years of his life. After his marriage in Alkmaar, in September 1546, to Eva van Teylingen, the daughter of his home town’s mayor, his radius of action shrank considerably: from Alkmaar he moved to Delft, where he practised as an official town physician for almost 40 years. From Delft he occasionally took trips to Alkmaar, Amsterdam, Haarlem, the Hague, Rotterdam and Leiden, which in those days were all very doable distances.1
