Faraday to Christian Friedrich Schoenbein   13 November 1858

Royal Institution | 13 Novr. 1858

My dear Schoenbein

Daily & hourly am I thinking about you and yours, and yet with as unsatisfactory a result as it is possible for me to have. I think about Ozone - about Antozone - about the experiments you shewed Dr. Bence Jones - about your peroxide of barium - your antozonized oil of turpentine - and it all ends in a giddiness - and confusion of the points that ought to be remembered. I want to tell our audience what your last results are upon this most beautiful investigation¹; and yet am terrified at the thoughts of trying to do so, from the difficulty of remembering from the reading of one letter to that of another what the facts in the former were. I have never before felt so seriously the evil of loss of memory and of clearness in the head:- and though I expect to fail some day at the lecture table, as I get older, I should not like to fail in ozone or in any thing about you.- I have been making some of the experiments Dr. B. Jones told me of, & succeed in some but do not succeed in all. Neither do I know the shape in which you make them as (I understand) good class experiments and telling proofs of an argument.- Yet without experiments I am nothing. If I were at your elbow for an hour or two, I would get all that instruction (as to precaution) out of you which might bring my courage up. I remember in old times (at the beginning of Ozone) you charged me with principles & experiments.- I wonder whether you could help me again?- Most likely not:- & it is a shame that I should require it:- but without such help and precautions on my part, I am physically unable to hold my place at the table;- and without I justify my appearance on a Friday Evening I had better withdraw from the duty.

What I should want, would be from ten to fifteen or at most twenty table experiments,- with such instructions as to vessels, quantities, states of solution materials & precautions as would make the experiments visible to all: & certain & ready.- Also the points of the general subject in what you have found to be the best order for the argument & its proof.

I have sought for the old bottle of Antozone oil of turpentine but believe I have used it all up. I fear it is of no use trying to make it by the end of January next year:- yet about that time I must give the evening if I give it at all. If you encourage me to give the argument (& I can only try if you help me)- have you any of the substance you could spare? and could you find conveyance for it by rail or otherwise? I fear there is no other substance that will represent it:- i.e. that approaches so near to isolated Antozone as that body does.

Now do not scold me. I am obliged to speak as I do. Perhaps you had better tell me that I must give up the subject for that I can hardly succeed in telling it properly by the way I propose. Do not hesitate to say so;- for I am well prepared by my inner experience in other matters, to suppose that may be the case. But then tell me so at once, that I may think over my position here for January[.]

Now for a more cheery subject. I saw Miss Schoenbein a few days ago (after a long interval) and was glad to see her looking well & happy. I am sure you will not think the worse of us for the effect England has had upon her, when you see her again. She will make you, her Mother, - Sisters & all happy. But I know she tells you all about herself & as to her state of contentment or happiness that will breathe in her letters. I have more to say but cannot bring it to mind. Believe me to be as Ever My dear Schoenbein

Your true & obliged friend | M. Faraday

Address: Dr. Schoenbein | &c &c &c | University | Basle | Switzerland