In the summer of 1707, he was an assistant physician in field hospitals at Brussels and Ghent during the War of the Spanish Succession.

He then traveled to Leiden, where he studied anatomy under Bernhard Siegfried Albinus (1653–1721) and Govert Bidloo (1649–1713), also attending Hermann Boerhaave’s lectures on chemistry and ocular diseases.

In 1708 he earned his doctorate from the University of Harderwijk, and in the summer of 1709, rejoined the Dutch military as a field surgeon during the Siege of Tournai.

His name is lent to the plant genus Heisteria, as well as to the spiral valves of Heister, defined as anatomical folds of the cystic duct.

His botanical writings were published as Beschreibung eines neuen Geschlechts in 1755, with illustrated descriptions of plants.