TODAY IN SCIENCE HISTORY ®  •  TODAYINSCI ®
Celebrating 24 Years on the Web
Find science on or your birthday

Today in Science History - Quickie Quiz
Who said: “Environmental extremists ... wouldn�t let you build a house unless it looked like a bird�s nest.”
more quiz questions >>
Home > Dictionary of Science Quotations > Scientist Names Index A > Samuel Hopkins Adams Quotes

Thumbnail of Samuel Hopkins Adams (source)
Samuel Hopkins Adams
(26 Jan 1871 - 15 Nov 1958)

American journalist and author whose investigative journalism and a series of eleven articles for Collier's Weekly in 1905, exposing false claims of patent medicines, led to the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act. He was also a prolific writer of magazine stories and novels.

Science Quotes by Samuel Hopkins Adams (8 quotes)

According to the estimate of a prominent advertising firm, above 90 per cent, of the earning capacity of the prominent nostrums is represented by their advertising. And all this advertising is based on the well-proven theory of the public's pitiable ignorance and gullibility in the vitally important matter of health.
— Samuel Hopkins Adams
'The Fundamental Fakes', Collier's Weekly (17 Feb 1906). Reprinted in The Great American Fraud (1907), 55.
Science quotes on:  |  According (236)  |  Advertising (9)  |  Capacity (105)  |  Drug (61)  |  Estimate (59)  |  Firm (47)  |  Gullibility (3)  |  Health (210)  |  Ignorance (254)  |  Matter (821)  |  Represent (157)  |  Theory (1015)

Any physician who advertises a positive cure for any disease, who issues nostrum testimonials, who sells his services to a secret remedy, or who diagnoses and treats by mail patients he has never seen, is a quack.
— Samuel Hopkins Adams
'The Sure-Cure School,' Collier’s Weekly (14 Jul 1906). Reprinted in The Great American Fraud (1907), 84.
Science quotes on:  |  Advertising (9)  |  Cure (124)  |  Disease (340)  |  Medicine (392)  |  Never (1089)  |  Patient (209)  |  Physician (284)  |  Positive (98)  |  Quack (18)  |  Remedy (63)  |  Secret (216)  |  Service (110)

Ignorance and credulous hope make the market for most proprietary remedies.
— Samuel Hopkins Adams
'The Subtle Poisons,' Collier’s Weekly (2 Dec 1905). Reprinted in The Great American Fraud (1907), 32.
Science quotes on:  |  Credulous (9)  |  Hope (321)  |  Ignorance (254)  |  Market (23)  |  Medicine (392)  |  Most (1728)

Medicine would be the ideal profession if it did not involve giving pain.
— Samuel Hopkins Adams
The Health Master (1913), 61.
Science quotes on:  |  Ideal (110)  |  Involve (93)  |  Medicine (392)  |  Pain (144)  |  Physician (284)  |  Profession (108)

Printer’s ink, when it spells out a doctor’s promise to cure, is one of the subtlest and most dangerous of poisons.
— Samuel Hopkins Adams
In 'The Sure-Cure School,' Collier’s Weekly (14 Jul 1906). Reprinted in The Great American Fraud (1907), 84.
Science quotes on:  |  Cure (124)  |  Dangerous (108)  |  Doctor (191)  |  Medicine (392)  |  Most (1728)  |  Newspaper (39)  |  Physician (284)  |  Poison (46)  |  Promise (72)

Shut your eyes to the medical columns of the newspapers, and you will save yourself many forebodings and symptoms.
— Samuel Hopkins Adams
'The Sure-Cure School,' Collier’s Weekly (14 Jul 1906). Reprinted in The Great American Fraud (1907), 84.
Science quotes on:  |  Diagnosis (65)  |  Eye (440)  |  Newspaper (39)  |  Save (126)  |  Shut (41)  |  Symptom (38)  |  Will (2350)

With a few honorable exceptions the press of the United States is at the beck and call of the patent medicines. Not only do the newspapers modify news possibly affecting these interests, but they sometimes become their agents.
— Samuel Hopkins Adams
'The Nostrum Evil,' Collier’s Weekly (7 Oct 1905). Reprinted in The Great American Fraud (1907), 5.
Science quotes on:  |  Agent (73)  |  Become (821)  |  Call (781)  |  Do (1905)  |  Exception (74)  |  Honorable (14)  |  Interest (416)  |  Medicine (392)  |  New (1273)  |  News (36)  |  Newspaper (39)  |  Patent (34)  |  Patent Medicine (2)  |  Possibly (111)  |  State (505)

With the exception of lawyers, there is no profession which, considers itself above the law so widely as the medical profession.
— Samuel Hopkins Adams
The Health Master (1913), 10.
Science quotes on:  |  Consider (428)  |  Exception (74)  |  Law (913)  |  Lawyer (27)  |  Physician (284)  |  Profession (108)


Carl Sagan Thumbnail In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion. (1987) -- Carl Sagan
Quotations by:Albert EinsteinIsaac NewtonLord KelvinCharles DarwinSrinivasa RamanujanCarl SaganFlorence NightingaleThomas EdisonAristotleMarie CurieBenjamin FranklinWinston ChurchillGalileo GalileiSigmund FreudRobert BunsenLouis PasteurTheodore RooseveltAbraham LincolnRonald ReaganLeonardo DaVinciMichio KakuKarl PopperJohann GoetheRobert OppenheimerCharles Kettering  ... (more people)

Quotations about:Atomic  BombBiologyChemistryDeforestationEngineeringAnatomyAstronomyBacteriaBiochemistryBotanyConservationDinosaurEnvironmentFractalGeneticsGeologyHistory of ScienceInventionJupiterKnowledgeLoveMathematicsMeasurementMedicineNatural ResourceOrganic ChemistryPhysicsPhysicianQuantum TheoryResearchScience and ArtTeacherTechnologyUniverseVolcanoVirusWind PowerWomen ScientistsX-RaysYouthZoology  ... (more topics)
Sitewide search within all Today In Science History pages:
Visit our Science and Scientist Quotations index for more Science Quotes from archaeologists, biologists, chemists, geologists, inventors and inventions, mathematicians, physicists, pioneers in medicine, science events and technology.

Names index: | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z |

Categories index: | 1 | 2 | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z |
Thank you for sharing.
- 100 -
Sophie Germain
Gertrude Elion
Ernest Rutherford
James Chadwick
Marcel Proust
William Harvey
Johann Goethe
John Keynes
Carl Gauss
Paul Feyerabend
- 90 -
Antoine Lavoisier
Lise Meitner
Charles Babbage
Ibn Khaldun
Euclid
Ralph Emerson
Robert Bunsen
Frederick Banting
Andre Ampere
Winston Churchill
- 80 -
John Locke
Bronislaw Malinowski
Bible
Thomas Huxley
Alessandro Volta
Erwin Schrodinger
Wilhelm Roentgen
Louis Pasteur
Bertrand Russell
Jean Lamarck
- 70 -
Samuel Morse
John Wheeler
Nicolaus Copernicus
Robert Fulton
Pierre Laplace
Humphry Davy
Thomas Edison
Lord Kelvin
Theodore Roosevelt
Carolus Linnaeus
- 60 -
Francis Galton
Linus Pauling
Immanuel Kant
Martin Fischer
Robert Boyle
Karl Popper
Paul Dirac
Avicenna
James Watson
William Shakespeare
- 50 -
Stephen Hawking
Niels Bohr
Nikola Tesla
Rachel Carson
Max Planck
Henry Adams
Richard Dawkins
Werner Heisenberg
Alfred Wegener
John Dalton
- 40 -
Pierre Fermat
Edward Wilson
Johannes Kepler
Gustave Eiffel
Giordano Bruno
JJ Thomson
Thomas Kuhn
Leonardo DaVinci
Archimedes
David Hume
- 30 -
Andreas Vesalius
Rudolf Virchow
Richard Feynman
James Hutton
Alexander Fleming
Emile Durkheim
Benjamin Franklin
Robert Oppenheimer
Robert Hooke
Charles Kettering
- 20 -
Carl Sagan
James Maxwell
Marie Curie
Rene Descartes
Francis Crick
Hippocrates
Michael Faraday
Srinivasa Ramanujan
Francis Bacon
Galileo Galilei
- 10 -
Aristotle
John Watson
Rosalind Franklin
Michio Kaku
Isaac Asimov
Charles Darwin
Sigmund Freud
Albert Einstein
Florence Nightingale
Isaac Newton


by Ian Ellis
who invites your feedback
Thank you for sharing.
Today in Science History
Sign up for Newsletter
with quiz, quotes and more.