Nikolaes Heinsius (The Hague, 1656 - Culemborg, 1718) was a Dutch doctor and writer.

Heinsius was the illegitimate son of Nikolaes Heinsius the Old and the Swedish Margaretha Wullen. With little help from his father, he became a doctor at the age of 20. In 1677 he had to flee the country for committing a murder, along with drunk friends, on the streets of the Hague. As a physician he traveled to France, Italy and Germany. In 1679 he came to Rome where he was the personal doctor of Cristina of Sweden until 1687. He was later the personal veterinarian of Brandenburg's Kleve.

In 1695 he returned to the Netherlands and settled in Culemborg, at that time free city and excluded from the exile that struck him. The same year he published Den Vermakelyken Avanturier ("The Wonderful Life and Pleasant Adventures of Mirandor"), which contained many autobiographical elements and was one of the first novels in Dutch literature. The novel was reprinted many times and was translated into German, English, French and Italian.

He also wrote five works of medicine, which were published in Kleve, and another novel, Don Clarazel de Contarnos (1697). In 1707 an official request was denied to the General States of the Netherlands for the revocation of the exile condemning him. Bibliografiamodifica wikitesto

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