Matthew Algernon Adams
British doctor
Matthew Algernon Adams (9 August 1836 – 29 April 1913) was a British medical doctor. He was the president of the Society of Public Analysts in 1889 and 1890, and a Fellow of the Royal Institute of Chemistry.
Biography
Adams was born in London and studied medicine at Guy's Hospital, hearing chemistry lectures by William Odling. After having been house-surgeon to the Public Dispensary in Leeds he settled, soon after 1860, as a medical practitioner in Maidstone. He specialised in eye surgery, in which he excelled and earned an almost international repute. Hard-working and well-read, he had wide scientific interests, with a predilection for chemistry. In 1874, while the Sale of Food and Drugs Bill was under parliamentary discussion, Adams worked for some time in the laboratory of James Alfred Wanklyn, and was in the same year appointed Public Analyst for the county of Kent. He held that position till 1911.
Adams was one of the medical men who, when the Food and Drugs Act compelled local authorities to appoint public analysts knowledgeable in chemistry. At that time delicate questions involving an accurate knowledge of the chemistry of food had not yet arisen, and there was fair reason why appointing authorities should entrust to the doctors, who to them were the apostles of all that was scientific, the duty of controlling the food supply.
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This entry incorporates text from “Matthew Algernon Adams” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.