Jones, whose family was from Pentyrch, Glamorgan, was educated at Jesus College, Oxford, where he matriculated on 28 June 1662.
[3] He became a licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians in 1677, obtaining a licence from Oxford University in the following year to practise medicine and working thereafter in Windsor, Berkshire.
[2][4] His works included a treatise, in Latin, on fevers (De febribus intermittentibus) (1683), and The Mysteries of Opium Revealed (1700), which was described by one commentator as "extraordinary and perfectly unintelligible".
[2][4] He also invented a clock which Robert Plot described as being "moved by the air, equally expressed out of bellows of a cylindrical form, falling into folds in its descent, much after the manner of paper lanterns."
After his death, on 22 August 1709, he was buried near the west door of Llandaff Cathedral.