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It was not in fact until several years had elapsed in the delusive researches of alchemy, that the application of chemical knowledge became instrumental in the advancement of the medical art. Rhases and Avicenna, who were the celebrated physicians of the age, are the first who introduced pharmaceutical preparations into their works, or made any improvement in the mode of conducting pharmaceutical processes. Avicenna describes, particularly, the method of conducting Distillation; he mentions also, for the first time, the three Mineral Acids, and distinguishes between the vegetable and mineral Alkalies; he speaks likewise of the Distilled Water of Roses, of Sublimed Arsenic, and of Corrosive Sublimate.

In the year 1226, Roger Bacon, a native of Ilchester in Somersetshire, and a Franciscan monk of Westminster Abbey, laid the foundations of chemical science in Europe; his discoveries were so extraordinary that he was excommunicated by the Pope, and imprisoned ten years for supposed dealings with the devil; it appears that he was a believer in an universal Elixir, for he proposed one to Pope Clement the Tenth, which he extolled highly, as the invention of Petro de Maharncourt.