He studied medicine at Leiden University and replaced his father Theodorus Schrevelius as head of the college faculty at Leiden in 1642.
He published a Latin-Greek lexicon and edited many classical authors, including an edition of Curtius Rufus owned by Thomas Jefferson. He died in Leiden. The Lexicon ran to scores of editions in half-a-dozen languages, to the early nineteenth century. An expansion of 1663 was edited by Joseph Hill.