[Pieter van Foreest: physician on the threshold of a new era]. / Pieter van Foreest: medicus op de drempel van een nieuwe tijd.

In a variety of ways attention is being drawn nowadays to the fact that Pieter van Foreest (1521-1597) died four hundred years ago. The question arises, however, whether such a comprehensive commemoration is justified by Van Foreest's contribution to the development of medical science. Medical history certainly does not attribute concrete substantial new findings to his name. Nevertheless, he earned the longstanding epithet 'Dutch Hippocrates' by his writings. Especially, his Observationes et curationes medicinales c.q. chirurgicales remained on vogue for some centuries after his death, mainly due to the accurate description of symptomatology of a wide variety of diseases. Van Foreest should be considered as a conspicuous representative of the new empirical medicine which gained favour after the humanistic rediscovery of the classical Greek authors, especially Hippocrates.

The pharmaceutical heritage of the Netherlands.

For the last 40 years the 'Kring voor de Geschiedenis van de Pharmacie in Benelux' (Society for the History of Pharmacy in Benelux) has been studying the pharmaceutical past, in which the pharmacist, the preparer of medicines from way back, occupies an important place. This historical study supplies some unexpected views of the past and the future. Sarton also pointed this out to us in his 'new humanism' (28). In his own words: "The present without its past is insipid and meaningless; the past without the present is obscure. The life of science, like the life of art, is eternal." His new humanism did not result in narrow specialism, but in what he refers to as a 'double Renaissance', which also incorporates nature, culture and man. In this way an inspiring influence emanates from the past and thus our common pharmaceutical heritage can form a link between our nations. In turn this can contribute to the process of evolution which is necessary to realize harmonization within the framework of the European community.