So WHY would it not have been hemophilia?

[clockworkgirl21]

I read an article that said Aleksey may not have had hemophilia, but a similar blood disease. Rasputin always told Aleksandra to tell the doctors to just leave him alone, and if the disease wasn't hemophilia, it could have just stopped on its own. Anyone have the article?

[etonexile]

Not the article as such...But Alexei most certainly DID have haemophilia as did many of his close relations in Europe with connections to Queen Victoria...the "pseudo-science" of other blood disorders is being kicked about by the mad and/or greedy who wish to claim his identity...
Rasputin was clever/caring enough to realize that the boy needed to just be "left alone" until the bleeding episode had subsided...the pushing-and-proding of the doctors only made it worse...and his promise of a recovery calmed the by-now nearly hysterical Empress to leave the boy in peace....

[Sarai_Porretta]

I believe this may be the article you are referring to:
http://www.sptimes.ru/archive/times/994/top/t_13276.htm

[clockworkgirl21]

Thanks, Sarai. That's not the same article, but it says pretty much the same thing as the one I was talking about.

[Lass]

Maybe he didn't have hemophilia. I, too, have read otherwise.

[Georgiy]

The fact that it ran in his family through Queen Victoria, and that he had all the usual symptoms of haemophilia and that the doctors all said it was haemophilia would suggest that he indeed had haemophilia. Any suggestion otherwise is by false claiments (who don't have haemophilia) or their supporters who have to get around the fact that the poor boy actually suffered from an incurable disease that is impossible to fake!

[bluetoria]

I have looked after peoplewith haemophilia. It would certainly be impossible to fake and it would have delighted Alix had she thought that her beloved son did not have that terrible disease.
The bleeding does often stop on its own without medical intervention.
I cannot imagine why anyone should claim now that Alexei didn't suffer from it except as Georgiy days to put forward a false claim that someone else who didn't have the disease was the Tsarevich.  

[La_Mashka]

Well..I understand why impostors would try to convince the public that he didn't have hemophilia.

We know it would have been incredibly hard for anyone to survive the shooting at Ipatiev House.... and even if Aleksei had survived the shooting itself, with bullet wounds and hemophilia it would have been miraculous if he did survived.... unless, he didn't have hemophilia.... so it makes sense that anyone claiming to be him, says it was not hemophilia

[Lass]

True, La_Mashka.

Still, I have read that Alexei's symptoms did not quite fit in with hemophiliac symptoms. And just speaking with no backing but common sense, here was an active boy who did enjoy playing about as any child of his age; yet he was only a few times badly struck with the illness. Why? I don't know.

[Pravoslavnaya]

My dear Lass:  It depends on where, in what source one has ever read that the Tsarevich did not suffer from hemophilia whether such an opinion can be viewed as objective or not.  Every book or position paper that has ever proposed this hypothesis has been written with the specific agenda of promoting the claim of someone saying that they were Alexei Nikolaevich or the son of Alexei.

It is safe to say that since no hemophiliac could have survived such horrific slaughter as that in the cellar -- especially because he would have been targeted as the Heir -- dear Alexei certainly was killed with the family he could not have lived without.

[clockworkgirl21]

Sadly, I have no doubt that poor Aleksey was killed with his family. But I think it's possible he could have had something besides hemophilia, but travels the same way hemophilia does: mother to son.

[Lass]

dear Alexei certainly was killed with the family he could not have lived without.

I am not unaware of the fact that a hemophiliac could not possibly have survived what went on in the cellar that night. And, contrary to the air of your post, Pravoslavnaya, I am not in the habit of believing nonsense.


My question is not do with this. Maybe you could answer my question. Did he really have hemophilia? If so, why was he so rarely stricken with it? That is what I was asking.

[bluetoria]

He wasn't 'so rarely stricken with it,' Lass. He was frequently laid low by it.
What do you suggest as an alternative cause of his bleeding? No other conditions quite fit the pattern of Alexei's suffering.
Besides which, it is important to take into account the rest of the family - you cannot deny that so many other princes shared Alexei's symtpoms.
(Belochka knows so much about this...she could explain it in very scientific terms.   )

[Lass]

I know how hemophilia works scientifically, having studied it a little.

From what I have read, Alexei was only severely ill a few times during the nearly 14 years of his life. I ask, being an active boy, how did he escape much worse, much more frequent cases of it, or even death?

[lostfan]

I think some people doubted because at Spala, he had a high fever, and that is traditionally not a symptom of hemophilia. However, he was probably sick on top of the bleeding, so it probably wasn't a real symptom.