Christian Friedrich Schoenbein to Faraday   19 July 1859

My dear Faraday,

The long silence I have kept to you is, I am afraid, the most palpable proof of your friend’s having become a poor man indeed. Formerly it was a real treat to me to write you a letter, now I have to make the greatest effort to take up my pen and fulfill even the most urgent duties of a correspondent, and it is hardly necessary to tell you the cause of that change: my mind is no more, what it was a short time ago, its former cheerfulness is gone and melancholy feelings and sadness have taken possession of it, weighing the more heavily upon me, than Mrs. Schoenbein is very far from being comforted and consoled about our grievous loss. Indeed time has as yet proved to us all a very poor healer of the deep wound, which was inflicted upon us four months ago. To distract a little my mind from domestic sorrow and to forget the highly deplorable state of affairs of Europe¹ I have these last three months shut up myself in my laboratory and I may say turned my back upon the rest of the world, avoiding even to touch a newspaper or to hear a syllable spoken about politics. Dry and stale as the subject must be to a mind grievously affected, I mean oxigen, I have taken it up again and worked upon it harder than I ever did. And I think not quite for nothing. First I ascertained the hypochlorites, manganates and ferrates (or rather the acids of those salts) to be “Ozonides”, i.e. decomposable by the Antozonides: HO<2>, KO<3>, BaO<2> &c. Then I tried to show, that the nascent state of Oxigen as such has nothing to do with the oxidizing powers of that element, and during the last six weeks I have almost exclusively occupied myself with what call “the chemical polarization of neutral oxygen”. After having once ascertained a number of facts (known to you) from which I drew the inference, that there are two active kinds of oxigen standing to each other in the relation of + to -, I thought it possible, even likely, that both kinds of active oxigen are at the same time produced out of inactive O, as often as one of them makes its appearance. Proceeding from those notions I first looked for HO + <plus>O as a production of the slow combustion of phosphorus, during which process, as it is well known, ozonized oxigen = <minus>O is engendered. My conjecture proved fully correct, peroxide of hydrogen being produced and contained in the sour fluid called phosphatic acid. And so closely are the two facts connected with one another, namely the ozonisation of inactive oxigen and the formation of HO<2>, that you will never obtain the one substance without the other. Being once sure of that important coincidence, I extended my researches to the productions of the slow combustion of Ether and found to my no small satisfaction, that in this case too notable quantities of peroxide of hydrogen (the type of the Antozonides) are engendered conjointly with another compound containing <minus>O (or Ozonide). After having ascertained those facts, my attention was directed to the electrolysis of water and I think, there can be entertained no doubt, that not only <minus>O but also HO<2> i.e. <plus>O makes its appearance at the positive electrode. Under proper precautions I have reduced permanganic acid to MnO, CrO<3> to Cr<2>O<3> &c. in fact desoxidized a number of bodies at that electrode. Reducing oxy-compounds at the electrode, where oxygen is disengaged seems to be paradoxical enough. As to the small quantities of ozonized oxigen disengaged and HO<2> formed during the electrolysis of water at the positive Electrode, I think, they must be considered as the surviving witnesses of the chemical polarization of the O of HO<2>, which O is transformed by the current into <plus>O and <minus>O. The inactive Oxigen disengaged during the Electrolysis of water is most likely a secondary production proceeding from the depolariation or neutralization of <plus>O i.e. <minus>O. Before long my papers on those queer subjects will be published and you shall have them as soon as possible, as I flatter myself, that the matter will interest you. If I have correctly accounted for the novel facts lately discovered by me i.e. if neutral oxigen be capable of being chemically polarized, or thrown into opposite states of chemical activity at the same time, well, I should think, I had done something to advance a little our knowledge of that mysterious and important element.

Our Midsummer-holidays haveing commenced I intend to go one of these days to the “Berner oberland” to fetch my two eldest girls, who have for some weeks been staying at a watering-place for the use of a mineral spring there and returning we have a notion to visit a retiring part of the black forest.

I confidently hope, you, Mrs. Faraday and your Niece are doing well and as to Miss Hornblower I was very sorry indeed to learn from you, that she had been obliged to undergo a painful operation². I ardently wish that by this time, she will be entirely cured and enjoy perfect health. Pray remember me most friendly to all of them, excuse my pale, stale and insipid letter and write soon to

Your | poor friend | C.F. Schoenbein

Bâsle July 19th 1859.

Dr. M. Faraday | &c &c &c