Christian Friedrich Schoenbein to Faraday   4 July 1854

My dear Faraday

Now-a-days people talk so much about the wonderful improvements of the ways of communication and intercourse being established between the different parts of the civilized world and to us it is a most difficult matter to send a little parcel from Bâle to London. Without that deplorable deficiency you had certainly received many weeks ago the paper enjoined¹, but I was forced to wait untill chance yielded me an opportunity to forward it to you. I should like very much you would read the memoir for it contains my views on the proximate cause not only of Electrolysis but also of what I have ventured to term Thermolysis, Photolysis, Electrosynthesis, Thermosynthesis and Photosynthesis, i.e. of chemical decompositions and compositions being effected by the agencies of electricity, light and heat. My leading idea is this, that the phenomena mentioned are due to allotropic modifications which the elementary bodies being concerned in those analytical and synthetical processes undergo, when placed under the influence of the agencies named.

HO is decomposed, because its O, on being put under the influence of the current happens to be transformed into <oring>O (by which I mean ozonized Oxigen) which as such cannot form water with H. Oxide of Silver which I hold to be Ag<oring>O is decomposed by heat, because this agency transforms <oring>O into O, which cannot combine with Ag &c. &c. &c. Perhaps a friend of your’s will take the trouble to translate the paper, for without reading the whole chain of my reasoning and arguments, I am afraid, you will not well understand the neological views of your friend. As to the electrosynthesis of oxigen and oxidable matters, I think I have been entirely successful in proving that it is due to the ozonisation of oxigen being effected by electrical discharge.

At this present moment I am busily engaged in researches on the desozonising influence being exerted by ponderable matters upon <oring>O and the results already obtained leave, I think, no doubt that a number of substances enjoy conjointly with heat the power of transforming both free and latent <oring>O into O, a fact which is interesting enough but by no means surprizing to me. Ozonized oxigen, by whatever means, electrical or chemical, it may have been generated on being put in contact with the peroxides of lead, manganese, silver, the oxides of mercury, the oxide of copper or silver and gold, the peroxide of iron &c is immediately brought back to its inactive state and the simplest way of showing this desozonizing action is as follows: Charge bottles with air being strongly ozonized by phosphorus, introduce some finely powdered peroxide of Silver, Lead, Manganese, Iron &c and shake the whole for half a minute or less and you will find that your Ozone is gone, no smell and action upon the test-paper being perceived any more. The substances just named being saturated with oxigen cannot, as oxidable matters do, take up Ozone and hence it seems to follow that in one case the disappearance of ozonized oxigen is due to its having been transformed into O, in the same way as this change of state is effected by heat.

Thenard’s² peroxide of Hydrogen is to me HO+<oring>O and you know well enough that the oxides, which according to my late experiments destroy the ozonized condition of oxigen, have also the power of decomposing HO+<oring>O into HO and O.

Chlorate of potash is to my notion ozonized oxigen associated to muriate of potash, now this <oring>O may speedily be transformed into O by the aforesaid oxides and peroxides and I find that peroxide of iron enjoys that power to a very remarkable degree, for 1/1000 part of it only, being mixt with the melted salt will cause a lively disengagement of oxigen even at a temperature at which pure chlorate does not yet yield a trace of that gas. 1/100 part of the peroxide named gives rise to such a violent elimination of oxigen as nearly to approach an explosion and produce an incandescence of the salt.

A small portion only of a large and intimate mixture of one part peroxide of iron and 50 parts of chlorate of potash being just heated to the point of fusion of the salt occasions such a rapid and complete decomposition of the latter that the whole mass quickly and spontaneously becomes incandescent without having time to fuse. The higher the degree of mechanical division given to the oxide employed the greater the desozonising or decomposing power of that matter. I entertain very little doubt that the same cause which acts in the peroxide of iron &c and determines the transformation of free <oring>O into O also produces the same effect upon ozonized Oxigen being contained in the peroxide of Hydrogen Chlorate of potash &c; in other terms that the desozonisation of the oxigen of the oxy-compounds named and their decomposition are phenomena depending upon each other. It appears to me to be a very singular fact and therefore worthy of remark that the oxigen of all the oxides or peroxides which enjoy the power of desozonising free <oring>O &c, exists either wholly or partly in the ozonized state itself. I hardly need add that what they call catalytic actions are to my opinion referable to allotropic phenomena. But of that more another time. From the preceding communications you will easily perceive that I cannot get out of the charmed circle drawn round me by that arch-conjurer called oxigen and I am afraid, so long as I can walk I shall move on that narrow ground.

I cannot conclude without expressing you my most grateful thanks for the kind letter³, with which you favored me some weeks ago and I must tell it you over and over again that the mere sight of your hand writing gives me infinite pleasure and always conjures up the image of its author whom I revere and love more intensely than any other of my friends.

I read your remarks on the chemical effects produced by cold with the greatest interest; it is indeed a subject of research worth while to pay the greatest attention to and I very little doubt that your conjecture on the proximate cause of the recoloring of the Dahlia pigmentum is correct.

I must not omit to tell you that we have kept in readiness the numbers of the Phil. Society of Bale for the library of the Royal Institution these many months; but up to this present moment we have not yet found a convenient opportunity for sending them off and beg therefore not to be charged with carelessness.

Next month I shall take a trip to the eastern Cantons of Switzerland to attend a meeting of our Swiss Association and go perhaps for a week or so to Munich and Nuremberg. Mrs. Schoenbein intends to pass some time with their parents at Stuttgart and the girls who are at home will be placed on the heights of the Jura to inhale its bracing air, jump about like chamois on rocks and in dales, in woods and on meadows. They charge me to offer to yourself and Mrs. Faraday their kindest regards to which I join my own.

Believe me my dear Faraday | for ever | Your’s C.F. Schoenbein

Bâle July 4. 1854.