# Abraham Buzaglo

Abraham Buzaglo (incorrectly called William 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 was parodied as a quack, mainly because of the "aboundingly" self-praising advertisements that he made for himself. His style of advertisement was humorously parodied by Captain Grose, an English draughtsman and lexicographer, with a caricature in a handbill titled "Patent Exercise, or Les Caprices de la Goutte". Despite his detractors, his 'cure' may not have been without effect. Buzaglo died in London in 1788, described as a considerable person.

## 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 (if not before: his brothers were merchants in London) 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 acquired British citizenship in 1771, which at that time required a private Act of Parliament.

## The Buzaglo stove

Winters being cold in England and heating inadequate ("a man roasted one part of his anatomy in front of a coal fire while his posterior was freezing"), 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 (see title image), 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:
   ... but her feet were still cold. One of those vessels with hot water, contrived for warmth by Buzaglo, was put into the bed toward the feet: and after about an hour, a plentiful sweat came on.

## 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.
On 11 February 1779 Buzaglo was granted a patent for 'Machines, instruments and necessaries for exercise (muscular strength and restoring exercise). The concept was to cure gout by vigorous physical exercise and sweating (preferably before a Buzaglo stove). 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 (1777)
   Taafe has been cured by Buzaglo and sent for the former, who told him fairly that Buzaglo had removed his gout in four hours, but said that the operation would kill any man less strong.
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 to.
   Invalids were assured that they would be rid of pain within a few hours, and completely cured in ten days, and that by similar means corpulency, indigestion, want of appetite, and so on could likewise be cured.

## Death

Abraham Buzaglo died at his house in Dean Street, Soho in 1788, aged 72; his death was reported "not disrespectfully" in the press. The Gentleman's Magazine, a prestigious publication, did so under the heading Obituary of considerable persons. He is interred in the Novo burial ground for Portuguese Jews, Mile End Road, London.