hemophlia made public?

[clockworkgirl21]

When did the Russians find out something was wrong with Aleksey?

[Pravoslavnaya]

I think those Russian people that were able to see the Tsarevich or hear of him much at all in his father's vast empire may have suspected that something was the matter when they began hearing excuses for Alexei Nikolaevich not being able to attend public appearances.  As the Heir, and one suspects as the littlest member of the Imperial Family, he inspired a great deal of enthusiasm and not to see him was a disappointment.  'The Tsarevich sprained his ankle' was not too far from the truth sometimes, but 'Alexei Nikolaevich has a bad cold' began to wear thin.  Rumors started sometime before the Spala incident in 1912, when people really started to talk.

A lot of those rumors appeared in the newspapers beginning in October 1912, when it was possible the boy might die.

The Tsarevich was stabbed by anarchists aboard the Standart', 'Alexei Nikolaevich is near death from injuries suffered in a bomb blast', 'The Heir has become seriously injured thanks to a very bad fall from a horse...  from a cupboard... during play.' We have even read here the sensational statements of Spiridovich, that his two sailor nannies actually tried to murder the child on the Standart!

As Alexei Nikolaevich began to recover and bulletins became more hopeful there was a lot of explaining to do, and in November the wire services began to publish what were supposed to have been statements from his doctors.  The translations can be seen in the New York and London Times...
 

'The Tsarevitch has tuberculosis of the hip joint and hemophilia...'  'The Russian heir has one skin too few, as it was with the English Prince Leopold.'  'He has the nervous excitement seen in children not expected to live too long'  'He is not expected to become Tsar'.

This, of course, smacked of the truth.  Yet the Palace staff released bulletins saying in so many words 'There is no truth to the latest rumours concerning the Heir to the Throne.'   Although newsreels showed the boy in his glory at Stavka a few years later, talk of a frail boy whose condition was an open secret never really stopped.

[La_Mashka]

wow!


Thanks for all that information


I suppose that after a few times of the Heir not showing up, and/or being carried, more than a few eyebrows were raised, but I had never read what the newspapers were saying.

Thank you for sharing

[Baby_Tsarevich]

What Alexei had tuberculosis? Whats tuberculosis? (or was that just one of the non true rumors?) :-/

[clockworkgirl21]

Tuberculosis: a highly variable communicable disease of humans and some other vertebrates caused by the tubercle bacillus and rarely in the U.S. by a related mycobacterium (Mycobacterium bovis) and characterized by toxic symptoms or allergic manifestations which in humans primarily affect the lungs

I think it was just an untrue rumor.

[Baby_Tsarevich]

O ok thanx!

[Pravoslavnaya]

Throughout the 1800's, and carrying over into the Tsarevich's era, one heard the term 'tuberculosis' applied to certain infections of the bones and joints affecting young children and adolescents, often blamed on unpasteurized milk.  (Dairy cows used to be carriers of tuberculosis until the disease was eradicated from cattle.)   Alexei Nikolaevich bled into his hip joint and muscle during the Spala episode (the one medical summary extant reads 'musculus ileopsas' or hip muscle) and the limp he acquired as a result of this episode must looked very much like the limp of a child with tuberculosis of the bone.

You are right, SailorBaby, 'tuberculosis of the hip' was one of the wildest rumors because no one in the Imperial Family wanted to say much about this tragic open secret about the dear little Tsarevich.  

[Baby_Tsarevich]

Thanks Elizabeth for clearing that up for me!

~Anastacia~

May our little Alyoshenka rest in peace

[Romanov_Fan_NAOTMA]

I think I heard that since they had to make so many excuses that people though Alexis was retarded or mental. but that is such a lie I don't know why'd they'd thhink that? In most of his pictures he looks just like a normal child.

[etonexile]

It's my understanding that people..."in society"...had a pretty good idea of what was wrong with the Heir,because of general upper-class knowledge of the situation with the descendants of Queen Victoria...but they "closed ranks"....it was "their" secret...But how long could some sort of illness in Alexei N. be kept a secret...as mentioned...when he was seen limping or being carried at state functions....?
TB was a sad illness in the 19th/early 20th centuries...but yet more socially acceptable...poets and artists were generally considered to have "consumption" as it was politely known....as they wasted away on the chaise...the unfinished work falling from their alban fingers upon the Turkish carpet....

[anna11]

http://www.alexanderpalace.org/palace/img/alexeinyt.jpg

I'm confused....I thought the illness was always a secret? But the looks that is an english paper, and it says it was published in 1912. Would anyone care to explain? Thanks.

[rosieposie]

Looking at it. It wouldn't be common knowledge to most in their country.   Most people back then probably didn't even know what OTMAA looked like let alone what their Tsar and Tsarina looked like.  So such a disorder would have only been kept private amongst anyone asscoiated with the IF.

[Sarushka]

Even though the article mentions "the czar's physicians," I doubt very much that this article was in any way an official statement by the Russian court. Sepculation on the cause of Aleksei's obvious illness was probably pretty rampant at the time, so I doubt this would have been viewed as the definitive word on the subject. For example, rumors that his skin was too thin, or that his bones were weak also circulated, especially after he was unable to walk during the tercentary celebrations.

[Forum Admin]

Prior to the Spala/Byelovezh incidents, Alexeis's condition was indeed fairly secret, known only to the family and court.  However, as Alexei was near death at Spala, public announcements were made about the Tsarevich's grave "illness" and prayer services for his recovery took place all over Russia.  Of course rampant speculation was happening about the nature of his illness, and his doctors made a report to a then London based international medical journal releasing the actual nature of the illness to the medical community.  This is the basis for the report which was then filed with the New York Times and published (the clipping of which is the above link...).  AFTER Spala, the haemophilia was not really much a secret anymore.

[nena]

Heir Aleksei, unfortunatelly, was diseased of hemophilia.
Empress and Tsar tried to protected him, and they didn't want people know his disease.
My question is: When people and world discovered his disease? During his life? Later? We know doctors knew, also some people around the IF. But the rest, when they knew it?

Any help--appreciated!