Samuel Hopkins Adams was an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 writer, best known for his investigative journalism.
Adams was born in Dunkirk, New York. In 1891, he graduated from Hamilton College.

From 1891 to 1929, he was a reporter for the New York Sun

New York Sun (historical)

The Sun was a New York newspaper that was published from 1833 until 1950. It was considered a serious paper, like the city's two more successful broadsheets, The New York Times and the New York Herald Tribune...

and then joined McClure's Magazine, where he gained a reputation as a muckraker

Muckraker

The term muckraker is closely associated with reform-oriented journalists who wrote largely for popular magazines, continued a tradition of investigative journalism reporting, and emerged in the United States after 1900 and continued to be influential until World War I, when through a combination...

 for his articles on the conditions of public health in the United States.

In a series of eleven articles he wrote for Collier's Weekly

Collier's Weekly

Collier's Weekly was an American magazine founded by Peter Fenelon Collier and published from 1888 to 1957. With the passage of decades, the title was shortened to Collier's....

in 1905, "The Great American Fraud", Adams exposed many of the false claims made about patent medicine

Patent medicine

Patent medicine refers to medical compounds of questionable effectiveness sold under a variety of names and labels. The term "patent medicine" is somewhat of a misnomer because, in most cases, although many of the products were trademarked, they were never patented...

s, pointing out that in some cases these medicines were damaging the health of the people using them.