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.

[2] Adams was one of the medical men who, when the Food and Drugs Act compelled local authorities to appoint public analysts knowledgeable in chemistry.

James Alfred Wanklyn had stated that milk, apart from a considerable variation in the fat percentage, was of remarkably constant composition, the amount of "solids-not-fat" ranging from 9.0 to 9.3%.

While this statement had never met with acceptance by continental chemists, public analysts had adopted Wanklyn’s figures and methods of milk analysis.

The Wanklyn's procedure for the separation of fatty and non-fatty constituents was rather crude and yielded vastly varying results, as demonstrated in a celebrated milk case, heard in Manchester in 1885.