Christian Friedrich Schoenbein to Faraday   8 April 1841

My dear Faraday

It was indeed with heartfelt joy and no small degree of pleasure that I received the other day your kind letter¹ though its contents are not quite such as I had wished them to be. I am however confident that the predictions of your medical friends will be fully realized and a temporary relaxation and abstinence from mental exertions go a great way in restoring the primitive elasticity of your mind and all the powers of your memory. To a certain degree I can speak from my own experience for after having worked rather too hard and overstrained a little too much my intellectual faculties I felt more than once a sort of mental drowsiness coming upon me and an ebbing of spirits which made me almost entirely unfit for any thing requiring a certain degree of moral force but the healing powers of time and quietness gave me always quickly back the freshness of my mind and why should this not be the case with you?

A temporary change of air and social relations would according to my humble opinion do a great deal of good to you for I cannot help thinking that the thick and heavy atmosphere of London in connexion with its neverceasing noise and bustle must be very far from proving congenial and beneficial to your constitution. On the other hand I am almost sure that inhaling for a couple of months the light and ethereal air of our mountainous regions would produce wonderful effects upon your frame and be the true panacea for your complaint. You have my dear Faraday no idea of the delicious sensations which alpine nature never fails exciting and you cannot imagine how refreshing, bracing and invigorating a mountain life of some weeks duration only proves to be. I have often seen men mentally and bodily fatigued going to the heights of the Rigi or other spots of a similar kind and returning replete with health and good spirits after having spent no more than a month there.

Can you not make up your mind for carrying such a plan into execution and coming over to Switzerland in the course of next summer say July or August the best season for making a stay in the higher parts of our country? I know a certain place in the Canton of Vaud being not very far from the lake of Geneva and delightfully situated near the entrance of the valley of Valais which I am almost sure you would like very much. They call it Bex and it is the residence of my friend Mr. Charpentier² director of the salt-works there, an eminent geologist and what is still more valuable the most amiable and good-natured man you can possibly meet with who would do any thing in his power to make your temporary stay at Bex as agreeable as possible. There you could live quite to your taste, move about entirely at your ease and remain thoroughly unmolested from unwished-for visitors and other inconveniences of town life. And if you had no objections to it, I should feel most happy to act as your cicerone for a week or two. Pray think seriously of my proposals and do not reject them at once for they have proceeded not from any selfish views that is to say from the wish of enjoying your personal presence in my country though I openly confess that your visit would make me a most happy man no! they have originated in the purest and most disinterested motives of friendship. I hope Mrs. Faraday will be a warm supporter of my idea and readily enter into my views.

In case you should feel inclined to spend part of the summer in Switzerland, pray let me know your mind as soon as you can in order to enable me of taking the preliminary steps with Mr. Charpentier.

How I would glory if my counsels should be followed up and lead to those results which I am now anticipating from them.

Though I have not been altogether idle this winter I have done very little in the way of scientific research, lectures and other sorts of unphilosophical occupa<tions> having taken up all my leisure time. With the beginning of May I trust I shall be able to commence working again and that the ozone will be the very first subject I shall take into my hands is hardly necessary to say. But my small battery, from which I can get only 15 cubic inches of mixt gases per minute will, I am afraid, not furnish a sufficient quantity of the subtle Principle; I shall however try to make the best of it.

I am very sorry to tell you, that your last papers³ have not yet reached Bâle which makes me fear that they are lost. Pray remember me kindly to Mrs. Faraday and believe me

Your's | most faithfully | C.F. Schoenbein

Bâle April 8th 1841.

Address: Doctor M. Faraday | &c &c &c | Royal Institution | London