(Continued from previous post...)
4. You DID ignore all the other bleeding episodes suffered by Alexei Nikolaevich. This may end up one of the more valid criticisms of your entire construct.
Okay... Let's deal with this right here. We don't need to discuss the bleeding navel in September 1904 because we've already dealt with that in this thread. If, as you claim, Alexei really did have haemophilia then his navel most would certainly have started to bleed almost immediately within those first few days after birth. The fact that it had taken almost six full weeks to happen (40 days after his birth) and that it had lasted for little more than just a single evening can actually stand as proof that Alexei did *not* have haemophilia. That first "episode" was, in fact, far too brief and had actually taken place far too long after birth for it to have been caused by an inherited clotting factor deficiency. But we've already agreed to disagree on that first point.
What about your evidence of the bleeding gums that can always be expected to happen when a haemophiliac baby boy first starts teething in his first year after birth? Oh, Yes... I remember now.. There is *no evidence* of bleeding gums when he was teething... So it is *not* haemophilia.
Or would you prefer to start with a single weak piece of evidence of black eyes at the age of three? Any one of us here who had managed to break his or her nose when they fell face first against the floor would be guaranteed to have black eyes... even without Haemophilia.. so that proves nothing. What about the bleeding gums when Alexei's baby teeth first started falling out at the ages of five, six, and seven? Again, there is no evidence at all of that ever happening... so it's not haemophilia. How about having a kidney/bladder infection at the age of seven? That proves nothing either.
Of course, you'd rather not talk about Spala at age eight, because you don't seem to think that it's all that important... even though this was Alexei's most serious episode.. the one single episode that had very nearly killed the boy... and the one single episode that had most certainly guaranteed Rasputin's place in history. But then, of course, your favourite haemophilia theory completely fails to explain away Alexei's highest fever ever of 105ºF in October of 1912 and his very sudden recovery only just a few hours later, following eight long days of agony. That's why your favourite version relies so heavily on a mysterious healing power that's been attributed to Rasputin's ever so undeservedly famous get-well telegram. Call it haemolytic anaemia instead of haemophilia and then the symtpoms can all be explained.. high fever and spontaneous recovery included... and Rasputin's silly telegram suddenly becomes completely irrelevant.
That leads us to the mudbaths at Livadia, which are proof that Alexei was *not* being treated for haemophilia. Absolutely useless for treating bleeding into the joints, the Tsar's Doctors.Federov and Botkin would most certainly have known that balneotherapy (mud bath therapy) is the traditional Ukrainian treatment for pain in the major joints caused by arthritis, which happens in both kids and adults alike who are afflicted with blood disorders of haemolytic anaemia ..*not* with haemophlia.
Maybe you'd like to discuss the Epistaxis at Mogilev in 1915. That's the fancy medical word for nosebleed that's now part of modern Laitn but comes from the original ancient Greek 'stazo' for drip. Nicholas himself had said that Alexei's nosebleed had started with a sneeze from a cold.. and the presence of a cold is obviously suggestive of a viral cause for the bleeding...which means it can't be haemophilia Very basically, viruses can hinder the production of new blood cells in the bone marrow which, in turn, can cause bleeding in patients with haemolytic anaemia... *not* with haemophilia.
Moving on...
In Tobolsk on January 30th (O/S) of 1918, Alexei twisted his right ankle playing on an ice hill. Naturally, we're all expected to believe that this is yet another example of haemophilia, just because Alexei had experienced an uncomfortable night and spent the rest of the next day in bed because he couldn't get his boot on. Come on now, let's be honest... How many of us here can remember having seriously sprained an ankle when we were kids and having had trouble putting on our shoes for the next day or two because of the swelling? And besides, what else is there for any teenaged boy to do but to stay home in a nice warm bed when it's 30 degrees below zero outside in the howling wind and snow when he can't get his boots on?
What Alexei had described in his diary on that particular occasion was a perfectly ordinary event in the life of any active teenage boy. If he had been a haemophiliac, as everyone now claims, then he couldn't just get his boot on for only a single day or two. Any haemophiliac twisting his ankle likely would have had a great black bruise reaching all the way up to his knee (and there's no such evidence of any large scale ecchymosis... yet another originally Greek word.. in any of the letters and diaries at any time during his young life) and he probably would have been incapacitated for the better part of a month. But instead, Alexei's right back out there in the snow within days and manages to do it all over again to the other ankle just ten short days later.
On February 19th, when the soldiers have finally had enough and decide to tear down the ice hill, that very same boy who everyone here now believes was a hemophiliac, admits in his own diary that he was actually passing his time by carving wooden daggers with his knife.. and then using those daggers in play fights with his friend Kolia. Now, does this honestly sound to you like the sort of activity that any parent or doctor would ever allow a teenage boy to do if they really did believe that he was haemophiliac? What parent in his right mind would ever give their young haemophiliac son a knife to play with??
Naturally, we can't leave out that last episode at Tobolsk that had caused the family to be separated for a time. Everyone still delights in telling that now infamous "sled on the stairs" story.. even though there isn't even one single first hand witness. The only person ever to tell this ridiculous whopper was the still teenaged Tatiana Botkin, and she wasn't even in the same building at the time. No one else had ever even hinted at the young Miss Botkin's claim of a sled on the stairs. Alexei's own parents, Nicholas and Alexandra, had both said in their diaries during that very same week that the same episode that Miss Botkin was referrring to had actually started with a cough... and that's clear evidence of yet another viral cause.. which again points to the bleeding of haemolytic anaemias.. and *not* to haeemophilia.
If you're going to be a supporter of the haemophilia legend, then you are forced to go with the young Miss Botkin's totally unsupported claim of a sled on the stairs in order to support your interpretatiion... because all haemophilic episodes will invariably require some sort of physical initiating cause. If we are to use the evidence for the start of that very same episode that actually comes from Alexei's own parents, then it simply won't fit with your favourite diagnosis....because the cause of the episode, coming as it does with a cough, was clearly viral rather than physical.
Tell you what. Favourite episodes at 20 paces. You go first. Give the date and identify the source of your information for the episode of your choice. Then tell us all why you think it was evidence of haemophilia... and then I'll tell you why it's not. Better still, summarise it all into a proper medical paper and submit it for peer review. Once your paper has passed the review process and gets published in an appropriate medical journal, then we'll actually be playing this game on a level field.
(Continued in next post...)
