Short answers, pulled from the story.
The word alchemy comes from the Arabic term al-kīmiyā, which borrowed a Late Greek phrase meaning 'the process of transmutation by which to fuse or reunite with the divine or original form.' This linguistic journey traces back to ancient Egypt where the Coptic word for Egypt meant both the country and the color black.
Robert of Chester translated the Book on the Composition of Alchemy into Latin Europe on the 11th of February 1144. This translation came from an Arabic work attributed to Khalid ibn Yazid and marked the point when alchemy became known in Latin Europe.
Paracelsus cast alchemy into a new form by rejecting chrysopoeia and stating that his aim was not making gold but considering what virtue and power might lie in medicines. He held Hermetical views that sickness and health relied on the harmony of humankind as the microcosm and Nature as the macrocosm.
A rigid distinction began to be drawn between alchemy and chemistry beginning around 1720. By the 1740s, alchemy was restricted to the realm of gold making leading to popular belief that it was nothing more than fraud.
Volume fourteen of Carl Gustav Jung's Collected Works titled Mysterium Coniunctionis serves as his magnum opus on the subject. Jung revived and popularized alchemical symbolism after receiving a copy of The Secret of the Golden Flower translated by Richard Wilhelm.