Originally published: 1888. By 1888, Dr. Compton Burnett had deservedly made his way in medical circles as a well-known London practitioner with the appointment as Physician to the London Homoeopathic Hospital. By chance Dr. Burnett met his host’s young nephew at dinner. This young man, “Dr. T.A.K.,” had recently returned from Europe after a tour of the medical universities before going into medical practice in England.
His uncle believed in Homoeopathy and he wished his nephew to interest himself in it rather than the allopathic school of treatment and thought. There is no doubt he contrived the meeting for that purpose. Dr. Burnett found the nephew “as full of scholastic conceit as an egg is full of meat,” and on young Dr. T.A.K. calling him a “quack,” left the house in anger. Burnett told Dr. T.A.K. that he could give him fifty reasons for being a homeopath, to which the doctor replied, “I have never heard one good reason yet.” This book is the collection of those fifty reasons that Burnett posted to Dr. T.A.K.
Dr. Burnett was provoked to write this work by some remarks made by a young allopathic medical man who regarded Homeopaths as quacks, and challenged Burnett to produce the fifty reasons, which he did, and Dr. Burnett replied “I could give fifty reasons for being a Homoeopath that if not singly, at least collectively, would convince a stone”. …