Actually thats not true.
http://www.pyromasse.com/infoe.html
What the hells that got to do with a fireplace?
Thats a masonary furnace. Matter of fact, I know of a couple of old farm houses in WI that had the smoke house/room in the basment and the owners converted them over to heat the house. Same thing...but they aint fireplaces the people on here are relating to.
A fireplace is a fireplace, when you put and insert into them they become a woodstove at the end of the house-sometimes in the middle which is better.
Dr. Martin Luther (the Protestant Reformer) had a tile stove similar to these--built in the early 1500s. I've seen it in his house in Wittenberg, Germany--very common in that part of the world, even today.