Alchemy

Surface concept

What passes for chemistry and possibly medicine in places without a tradition for restorative magic.

No intrinsic magical gifts are strictly needed to practice simple alchemy. By using reagents with varying properties they produce things that equates to magic, or that at least approximate magical effects to most commoners.

On Orn alchemists are common only due to the fact that so many fields fall under it as a category. Industrial chemists, surgeons, pharmasists and herbalists may all be called alchemists to some degree.

Some alchemists do utilize magic however, and can produce effects equivalent to, or indeed identical to, actual spells. This is where true alchemy lies.

Medicine

Most prominent, and easily noticed, is the use of alchemical substances to cure ailments and treat injuries. These remedies are not necessarily magical in nature, but when they are they fall under the term Alchemy.

In depth

Alchemy is, in its essence, about change and transformation. In many ways literally, as with products from practical alchemy, like potions, oils and ointments. In other ways however, this transformation and perfection of the self, is metaphysical. It must be understood as a principle most alchemists beyond the mere chemists strive to uphold. As such a serious alchemist usually get an education in "the greater picture", like philosophy, theology, magic and mysticism. This is in an effort to instill a range of required priciples, like equivalent exchange and as above, so below - without which the act of transmutation is impossible.

The common trope that alchemists desire to transmute lead to gold is not entirely false, but can miss the greater point of the process also applying to the alchemist themselves. Turning oneself into a perfect being, into figurative gold.