Christian Friedrich Schoenbein to Faraday   11 May 1843

My dear Faraday,

As a friend of mine is going to England I take the liberty to send you through him some papers in the contents of which you will perhaps take some interest. I am rather sorry that one of the memoirs is written in german I trust however that before long a french version of it will be published in the "Bibliotheque universelle" and in that case I ask you the favor to let me know what you are thinking about the views I have taken of the chemical effects which are produced by contact¹.

A circumstance that appears to me to offer a good deal of scientific interest and to which I have paid a particular attention in my paper is the fact that the chemical affinity of some elementary bodies for certain substances is in many instances very much enhanced by bringing those bodies into such a state as ought, according to our present notions, to make them less inclined to enter into a chemical combination than they are when not so conditioned. Chlorine for instance does not chemically unite with isolated hydrogen at the common temperature and in darkness whilst chlorine being placed under the same circumstances readily combines with hydrogen if the latter body happens to be chemically associated with Sulphur, Selenium, Phosphorus, Nitrogen, Arsenic, Antimony, Tellurium &c. Oxigen does not unite with hydrogen without being heated or put in contact with Platinum if both elements happen to exist in an isolated state; but oxigen being associated with sulphur, and hydrogen being combined with the same substance do readily form water even at very low degrees of temperature. Chemistry teems, as it were, with facts of a similar description. As far as I know, very little or no attention has as yet been paid to the influence exerted by one ingredient part of a binary compound upon the chemical bearings of the other constituent part. This influence, however, is to my opinion well worthy of being closely studied and very far from being explained by the principles of what they call the electro-chemical theory. As to the latter, do you not think it high time to subject it to a most seve<re> and scrutinizing review? To my humble opinion it rests upon a very doubtful and unsatisfactory matter-of-fact foundation.

If Mr. Ryhiner² the bearer of these lines should happen to deliver them in person to you, pray receive him kindly and let him see the Royal Institution. He was once a pupil of mine and is in every respect a most excellent and amiable young man.

In offering to you and Mrs. Faraday my most hearty salutations

I am my dear Faraday | Your's | most truly | C.F. Schoenbein

Bâle Mai 11, 1843.

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