In human history new technologies have often revolutionized society and life. One of them has been distillation. Besides providing society with important and potent beverages, it has also had a major impact on medicine. Specifically, medicines dissolved in alcohol are more easily preserved and become more potent through concentration of active substances and are better available biologically. Medical distillates even when not based upon alcohol, also concentrate active substances and in many cases make them available in new ways. In the present paper we will look at the history of distillation historically focusing on the major exchanges of technologies that have taken place over the last two thousand or more years between West and East, East and West, and how this relates specifically to medicines. The thesis will be advanced that not only was there a free interchange of technology, but also of specific medicines based on distillation and that the era of the Mongol Empire was particularly important in terms of what took place due to the unification of more of the Old World under a single political authority than any other period of history.