So it turns out that, if you really understand what the alchemists were doing, they were doing some fairly remarkable stuff.
Their recipes were encoded in symbolism, which makes them a challenge to reconstruct. (I have a Gryphon Clerks novel planned in which the instructions for making a kind of bioengineered polymer are encoded in Elvish poetry.)
Via a private share off G+.
Indeed the whole lead into gold thing was just so they could get patrons for their real research. (Or so I understand.)
Fascinating!