OZONE AND ANTOZONE. 
BY CHARLES M. WETHERILL, PH. D., M. D. 
ScHOFNBEIN, in the year 1840, called attention to the existence of a substance 
which he named from one of its most striking characteristics, ozone, (ofw, I 
smell.) he peculiar odor in the neighborhood of a good electrical machine 
when in action, and especially when the electricity issues from a point upon 
the prime conductor, or is drawn from it as a spark, had been well known. 
A similar odor had also been perceived accompanying thé fall of the thunderbolt.* 
This phenomenon had been characterized as a phosphoric or a sulphur smell. 
Schoenbein called attention to the fact that a similar smell is perceived during 
the decomposition of water by the voltaic pile, and is observed accompanying 
the oxygen which appears at the positive pole when the gases are collected 
separately, and that it is also experienced in many chemical processes, espe- 
cially in those involving a slow combustion. In explaining the odor of the 
active electrical machine, it had been assumed that the sensation is due solely 
to a peculiar action of the electricity upon the organs of smell, and not to the 
presence of a material substance; but Schoeubein discovered, in the cases 
alluded to, the existence of & body having the chemical properties of active 
oxygen—that is, of this gas in its condition of entering most readily into chemi- 
eal combination, to which he attributed the phenomenon in question, and to 
which he assigned a characteristic name. 
During.the twenty-five years which have elapsed since Schoenbein’s dis- 
covery, this difficult subject has been investigated by many scientists, and 
especially by Schoenbein himself, by Marignac, De la Rive, Fremy, Erdmann, 
Berzelius, Williamson, Becquerel, Baumert, and others equally well known in 
research. While there are few subjects which present a wider field for investi- 
gation, or which are more important in their relations to a knowledge of animal 
Jife, and to some interesting practical questions in technology, there are few which 
require a greater patience, or a greater degree of skill in manipulation for their 
research. It is in consequence of these difficulties that our knowledge of 
ozone is so limited, notwithstanding the time and labor which have been be- 
stowed upon it. It is the object of the present article to give a bricf sketch 
of what is known respecting this substance, on the authority of the article ozone 
in Poggendorff’s Dictionary, and from the essays of experimentors in various 
scientitic periodicals. 
Some time elapsed after its discovery before very definite views were held 
as to the true nature of ozone. Schoenbein, who for a long time denied 
that ozone is an allotropic form of oxygen, at first supposed that it was 
a new body which, in union with oxygen, or perhaps with hydrogen, con- 
stituted nitrogen, to which he attributed a compound character. De la Rive 
imagined that the peculiar smell was due to the action upon the organ, of 
* Homer notices the smell of the thunderbolt. Mohrin Pogs. Ann., xci, 625. Thus, in 
the Odyssey, book xii, verse 417, and xiv, 307, Jupiter strikes a ship with a thunderbolt, 
ev de Seevov TANTO, ‘* quite full of sulphurous odor”’ In the Iliad, viii, 135, Jove hurls a 
bolt, ‘‘ with the flame of the burning sulphur,” into the ground before Diomede’s chariot. 
In the same poem, xiv, 415, Ajax huris a rock at Heetor, who falls ‘‘jike a mountain oak 
struck by lightning, which lies uprooted, and from which the fearful smell (odu7) of smoking 
sulphur rises.” 
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