Auguste Scheurer-Kestner. Contribution to the atomicity of iron

It was known that the normal salts of the higher oxides could be made basic and still be soluble. Auguste Laurent had postulated that the same body could have two different atomic masses if the functions it performed were considered, for example, Fe² (ferrosum = 28) and Fe^4/3 (ferricum = 18.66). Scheurer-Kestner proved that when iron was dissolved in nitric acid to saturation, the result was always basic iron nitrate and the basicity depended on the concentration of the acid as a ferric salt. To demonstrate the hexatomic nature of iron Scheurer-Kestner prepared and determined the properties of a variety of ferric polyacid and acetol nitrates and showed that although all of them were well defined and crystallized, they did not lend themselves to rational representation while retaining the old atomic mass of the element.