BUZAGLO, WILLIAM:

English inventor and empiric; died at London in 1788. His first claim to distinction was his introduction of stoves made on a new plan, and intended for the heating of large public buildings. He afterward practised medicine and professed to be able to cure the gout without drugs, by muscular exercise alone. Whatever may have been the real efficacy of his method—which seems analogous to the modern massage—he was generally regarded as an empiric because of the nature of his advertisement, abounding, as it did, in self-laudation. His manifesto was humorously parodied by Captain Grose in a handbill, given with a caricature, entitled "Patent Exercise, or Les Caprices de la Goutte."

Bibliography:
  • Lysons, Environs of London, iii. 479.
J. G. L.
Images of pages