Faraday to Christian Friedrich Schoenbein   5 March 1851

Royal Institution | 5 March 1851.

My dear friend

I had your hearty Christmas letter in due time¹ - and was waiting for the papers referred to in it when lo! they arrived about 4 days ago and your friend Professor Bolley² called and left them & his card but not his address. I was ill & I believe in bed and could not see him. I have not been out of the house for a week or more because of inflamed throat & influenza - being unable to speak & obliged to give up lecturing but I am now improving & trust I shall see the Professor soon[.] The papers & the specimens of oil of turpentine are all quite safe & most valued treasures[.] I have read the papers through and I think you must now begin to rejoice in ozone for though it has cost you a great deal of trouble & work still it has surely made wonderful way & what is more is progressing & will progress. Though you may sometimes get tired of it still I think you never take it up afresh without being rewarded. I have been consulting with a medical friend about the medical paper & he (Dr. Bence Jones) recommends that it be sent to the Medico chirurgical Society - where it will be introduced at once into the minds of the Medical Profession and appear in the transactions³[;] tomorrow we shall meet again when he will have read the paper & we shall decide. The chemical paper I have sent off at once to the Chemical Society⁴ - it will appear there in time for me to have access to & use of it on my or rather your evening which I expect will be the 13th June⁵ or the middle of our great exhibition. When I drew out a sort of preliminary sketch of the subject I was astonished at the quantity of matter - real matter - and its various ramifications - and it seems still to grow upon one. What you will make it before I begin to talk, I do not know[.]

I do not as yet see any relation between the magnetic condition of oxygen & the ozone condition but who can say what may turn up? I think you make an inquiry or two as to the amount of magnetic force which oxygen carries into its compounds. This is indeed a wonderful part of the story for magnetic as gaseous oxygen is the substance seems to lose all such force in compounds. Thus water which is 8/9th oxygen contains no sensible trace of it: and peroxide of iron which itself consists of two most magnetic constituents - is scarcely sensibly magnetic so little have either of these bodies carried their forces into the resulting compound. Sometimes I think we may understand a little better such changes by thinking that magnetism is a physical rather than a chemical force but after all such a difference is a mere play upon words & shews ignorance rather than understanding. But you know there are really a great many things we are as yet ignorant of - and amongst the rest the infinitesimal proportion of our knowledge to that which really is to be known. I have a copy of my last papers⁶ ready for you & if Professor Bolley can take charge of it shall give it into his hands.

I read your theory of the pile in the Geneva journal with great pleasure and go with you I think to the full extent⁷. My mind was quite prepared for the view years ago. I do not suppose you ever see the back numbers of an old work which still drags its slow length along or else you would see that at Paragraph 949, 950⁸, and again 1164⁹ and 1345, 1347¹⁰, and elsewhere that I was ready to agree with you 10 or 15 years back.

I have no doubt I answer your letters very badly but my dear friend do you remember that I forget, and that I can no more help it than a sieve can help the water running out of it. Still you know me to be your old & obliged & affectionate friend and all I can say is the longer I know you the more I desire to cling to you[.]

Ever My dear Schoenbein | Yours affectionately | M. Faraday

Address: Professor Schoenbein | &c &c &c | University | Bâsle | on the Rhine