Faraday to Christian Friedrich Schoenbein   22 January 1838

Royal Institution | 22 Jany 1838

My dear Sir

I have received two kind letters¹ from you since I wrote last² and must reply although I shall be able to write only a very short letter for now my severe duties for the Season have commenced & I get little rest & not the time I require for experiments & papers. The greater part of the former & the whole of the last of yours I have sent to the Philo‑sophical Magazine³. Your results are of the highest interest & must encourage you to work on in the mind which is your profession. The consequences which you procure with the per oxide of lead are in perfect accordance with my views of voltaic action and I go with you to the extent of believing in actions which are of a chemical nature in their origin though not producing i.e. not proceeding to the extent of causing combination or decomposition, see paragraphs 623. 624. &c of the sixth series of my experimental researches⁴, but I am not yet prepared to go the length of admitting that such an attraction can cause a continuous current of electricity i.e that an action or force can produce an effect & not itself be lowered or equivalently affected at the same time. But I have not your letter at present & perhaps that is not what you mean[.]

In the peroxide of lead action I suppose you have a body which originates the current by its attraction for hydrogen, acts at the opposite side of the arrangement to what the zinc or other oxygen attracting body does, but the cause of the anions & cations with respect to the current produced is the same as in all other cases. Is it not so: I am half afraid of writing this chit chat not having your letter by me.

I have been working very hard lately on Induction⁵[.] I have sent two papers to the Royal Society & am experimenting & writing for the third & fourth⁶. You shall have them printed soon & I must not stop to tell you my views for to tell them piecemeal would give you no information[.] Since my unlucky letter to my late friend M Hachette hurried Nobili into such mistakes⁷ I have been rather averse to giving short or premature accounts of my views.

Again I must have yours, for the present in haste[.]

I am My dear Sir | Your Obliged & faithful friend | M. Faraday

Profr Schoenbein | &c &c &c

Address: Professor Schoenbein | &c &c &c | Bâle | Sur le Rhine