History of biochemistry
The term “biochemistry” itself is derived from the combining form "bio-", meaning "life", and "chemistry". The word is first recorded in English in 1848, while in 1877, Felix Hoppe-Seyler used the term ("Biochemie" in German) in the foreword to the first issue of "Zeitschrift für Physiologische Chemie" (Journal of Physiological Chemistry) as a synonym for physiological chemistry and argued for the setting up of institutes dedicate to its studies. Nevertheless, several sources cite German chemist Carl Neuberg as having coined the term for the new discipline in 1903, and some credit it to Franz Hofmeister.
Alchemy
Beginning around 1720, a rigid distinction was drawn between "alchemy" and "chemistry" for the first time. By the 1740s, "alchemy" was now restricted to the realm of gold making, leading to the popular belief that alchemists were charlatans, and the tradition itself nothing more than a fraud. In order to protect the developing science of modern chemistry from the negative censure of which alchemy was being subjected, academic writers during the scientific Enlightenment attempted, for the sake of survival, to divorce and separate the "new" chemistry from the "old" practices of alchemy. This move was mostly successful, and the consequences of this continued into the 19th and 20th centuries, and even to the present day.