Abraham Buzaglo
Abraham Buzaglo was an 18th-century Moroccan-British inventor. He invented a new plan of stoves to heat large public buildings, and a foot-warmer. He later introduced a cure for gout through regular muscular exercise. He praised it so extravagantly in his advertisements that he was satirised as a quack. Despite his detractors, his 'cure' may have been effective. Buzaglo died in London in 1788; his death was reported respectfully.
Early life
Abraham Buzaglo was born in Morocco in about 1716, into a Sephardic Jewish family, the second son of Moses Buzaglo, who may have been a rabbi. In a brief article in the 1901 edition of the Jewish Encyclopedia he is called William Buzaglo, but this appears to be a mistake. Cecil Roth, who wrote a more detailed note of Buzaglo's life, called him "The last but by no means the least of an extraordinary band of brothers". Getting into trouble with the Moroccan authorities, he spent some years in prison under sentence of death by burning. He arrived in England in 1762 and, as was permissible in Jewish law, married his niece, Esther Rosa, daughter of his brother Haham Shalom Buzaglo. It appears he was soon successful in business and he became British by denization in 1771.The Buzaglo stove
Winters being cold in England and heating inadequate, Buzaglo turned his mind to improvements. On 23 April 1765 he was granted a patent for 'Machine for warming rooms equally in every part and without offensive smell, by means of a coal fire'.This machine, commonly called a Buzaglo, consisted of a cast iron superstructure containing a coal-fired stove. Unlike an ordinary coal fire, where the air passed upwards through coals burning on a grate, hence sending smoke and most of the heat up the chimney, it worked on an opposite principle. The air was sucked downwards through the burning coals, under the floor in pipes, and hence up a chimney. Thus the fire tended to consume its own smoke, the floor was heated, and so was the cast iron work of the stove, which was enormous, and behaved like a radiator.
As an added attraction it could be, and was, cast into aesthetically pleasing shapes. Benjamin Franklin, who visited London, noticed two specimens, one in the Great Hall of the Bank of England, the other in the Hall of Lincoln's Inn. Franklin described them as "temples cast in iron, with columns, cornishes, and every member of elegant architecture". Another specimen, described as a "seven-foot Chippendale-style marvel" was given by colonial governor Lord Botetourt to the House of Burgesses, Virginia, and can be seen today at Williamsburg Courthouse.
The Buzaglo foot-warmer
Buzaglo's next invention was for "a warming machine made either of copper, brass, tin, pewter, lead, steel, iron-plate, bell or other metal and acting without fire, for the purpose of warming the feet of persons riding in carriages", for which he received a patent in 1769. This may have been an early hot water bottle; an 18th-century description of a medical case said:Gout doctor
Gout is a metabolic disorder in which sodium urate is deposited in the joints, notably the big toe, and can be very painful. In Buzaglo's time the complaint was believed to afflict mature, sexually active males, and to be associated with an opulent lifestyle and excess. Paradoxically, there was a widespread belief that gout was a blessing in disguise, because it was Nature's way of eliminating toxins, thus preventing other, worse, afflictions. Propensity to gout was inherited; the disease could be managed, but nor cured. According to Roy Porter "the very idea of some sure-fire cure for gout was widely repudiated as quackish, un-English, almost treasonable".On 11 February 1779 Buzaglo was granted a patent for 'Machines, instruments and necessaries for exercise. The concept was to cure gout by vigorous physical exercise and sweating. In a treatise Buzaglo claimed to have been "dreadfully afflicted by the Gout" himself until he discovered his cure, which he did by years of reading "the Works of some famous Eastern Hebrew Writers". Buzaglo's method was contrary to prevailing medical ideas but was not absurd; present-day scientific papers on gout have reported the benefits of exercise. Horace Walpole wrote From the satirical print it appears that patients were required to exercise before a Buzaglo stove, their affected limbs being protectively bound and encased.
Nevertheless, Buzaglo got a reputation as a quack or, in more polite language, an 'empiric'. Since patients had to be induced to undergo a vigorous programme of exercise, Buzaglo used inflated advertising to persuade them.
According to Lysons :
- Paul Sandby, satirical print, British Museum. Patients exercise before a Buzaglo stove, affected limbs protectively encased. The middle character may denote Buzaglo himself.
- Isaac Cruikshank after George Moutard Woodward, detail, British Museum. The figure is one of 24 in which a character ends up in a dance with death. In this one a gouty old man exclaims "Buzaglo's Exercise was nothing to this!"