So WHY would it not have been hemophilia?

[olga]

Do you have a claimant to support? I remember your name from somewhere.

[J_Kendrick]

the nosebleed on the Imperial Train home from Mogilev, and the aftermath of sledding down the stairs at Tobolsk -- stand out because they are so well documented.

 

The incidents at Mogilev and Tobolsk are certainly well discussed and the subject of considerable rumour. But they are not particularly "well documented"....  just well commented on and often claimed to be evidence.

From Nicholas II's personal diary, December 3rd, 1915: "Alexei started a cold yesterday, and this morning had a slight nosebleed after sneezing".  Once again, Nicholas II's private diary was not open to public acccess until 1924, so who was the first person ever to decide that this was evidence of "haemophilia"?   Give the name, date and source of your information.

Given that Alexei's nosebleed, in Nicholas II's own words, had started from the sneezing of a cold, this can also be considered to be evidence of a possible viral cause of the Tsarevich Alexei's actually infrequent episodes. Again, this issue is dealt with in the September 2004 issue of the American Journal of Hematology.

As for the sled on the stairs... How many original sources are there for that now famous story?  Answer: Just one... in a quote first made by Tatiana Botkin in 1921, who was not resident in the Governor's mansion at Tobolsk at the time and was not a first hand witness.  At that particular moment in March of 1918, the one and only person in Tobolsk to tell the story of the alleged "sled on the stairs" was actually was nowhere near Alexei.  In reality, the then 19 year old Tatiana Botkin was holed-up with her 17 year old brother Gleb in a completely separate set of rooms a considerable distance away from the Governor's mansion, in the middle of a snowstorm.

No one who was actually in Alexei's presence during that same week at Tobolsk had made any reference at all to the use of a "sled on the stairs".  There is no confirming second source evidence of this alleged incident of any sort whatsoever in any of the personal diaries or private correspondence that were written by members Alexei's family, or by anyone else who was actually in the Governor's mansion for that matter.  

Tatiana Botkin is the only source of this story.  During that same week, Nicholas and Alexandra had both written in their diaries that the start of that very same episode at Tobolsk had begun when Alexei developed a pain in his groin from a cough.  Given a choice, which would your rather believe?... Alexei's own parents, or a teenage girl stuck living with her younger brother in a set of rented rooms across town?

But along with these several less dramatic instances occurred -- bumps and bruises that a normal boy might have brushed off but that meant several days in bed for Alexei Nikolaevich.  Sprained ankles were complicated by bruising and bleeding.  Bleeding into the joints was known to occur very often,

All of this is pure speculation after the fact, with no supporting evidence for any single incident of bruising recorded prior to the episode at Spala in October of 1912.  That his joint problems may have been caused by bleeding into the joints is also a subject of purely second hand information and speculation.

One only need to look for proof at those now famous photographs that everyone here has seen of Alexei being given a mud bath at Livadia in the Ukraine. Mud baths of this type are perfectly useless for the treatment of joint pain caused by bleeding.  To this very day, however, these very same mud baths of the type that Alexei was administered at Livadia are known to be the traditional Ukrainian treatment for pain in the major joints that is caused by chronic and severe arthritis.

Both Doctors Botkin and Federov would have been fully aware of this fact. Known by its medical name of Balneotherapy, a total of 291 peer reviewed medical studies on the subject of mud bath therapy for joint pain in chronic and rheumatoid arthritis are listed in the archives of the National Library of Medicine.   The large majority of those very same medical papers are written in Russian.

Obviously, joint pain from arthritis has nothing at all to with haemophilia, but serious joint pain from chronic arthritis is known for a fact to occur in another equally serious class of blood disorders that most certainly can produce the same type of bleeding episodes that are seen Alexei's case.  It is also quite possible for certain examples of this other class of blood disorders to be acquired in the very same X-linked fashion of inheritance as haemophilia.

 The Empress Alexandra knew very well that whenever the blood was reabsorbed after a relatively minor incident Alexei would have a slight fever.  This is a symptom of hemophilia.

Fever is most certainly *not* a primary symptom of haemophilia.

Fevers do not occur as a direct result of bleeding caused by a clotting factor deficiency.  Generally, fevers only occur in cases of haemophilia as a result of secondary infection acquired through open wounds that have resisted healing.  Fevers of the type you have described most certainly do occur, however, when the blood's inability to clot in cases of bleeding or haemorrhage is caused by a low platelet count.  That, of course, brings us right back to the very same medical term that you have so strongly opposed elsewhere on this board... thrombocytopenia.

Sorry to rock the boat again, but, the evidence of Alexei's fevers... fevers which generally do not happen in cases of bleeding caused by a clotting factor deficiency... his famously sudden recovery at Spala... Nicholas II's doctors treating their young patient for swollen and painful joints at Livadia with a traditional Ukrainian mud bath... this evidence and much more that is recorded in Alexei's medical history, all points in the direction of a very much different class of blood disorders.

JK

[J_Kendrick]

Do you have a claimant to support? I remember your name from somewhere.

Medical and historical fact in the subject under discussion in this thread have nothing to do with claimants.  You'll need to come up with a far better rebuttal than that.

You probably have heard my name before.  You'll find it in the September 2004 issue of the American Journal of Hematology.

[Pravoslavnaya]

Mr. Kendrick -- let us agree to disagree.  Your article in the American Journal of Hematology has been discussed elsewhere and not a few of the people commenting about it on this forum are medical specialists who have concluded that thrombocytopenia in an infant would have proven fatal to him or her in weeks.  The Tsarevich-Martyr (for the Orthodox Church proclaims him so) lived fourteen years with the disease no one in his family mentioned only because it was to be kept a state secret.   Contrary to the extrapolations you have in fact devised for the sake of a claimant, the doctors attending the Tsarevich did leave a medical description of the Spala episode that points to hemophilia and its complications.  They duly recorded in a proper medical record other than the official report made by Count Fredericks (that he produced in order to mislead the public) that Alexei Nikolaevich bled into his hip joint and muscle.  Moreover, newspaper articles appearing in the New York Times in November 1912 leaked the confidential information that the child had hemophilia and the Russian Imperial Court were all too quick to write articles to deny it.  Methinks the Court protested too much, because they were desperate not to have it known the Tsarevich was that ill.

You were not there to see the boy suffer, either... but his mother, his father and his doctors were, and worried about him in terms of the Royal Disease it was customary for his extended family not to speak of.  You dismiss a number of smaller episodes Alexei himself noted in his diary because they do not fit your construct.  Those day-to-day mishaps attest to the fact that hemophilia was a 24/7/365 fact of life for the boy.  I realize you support a man for whom it was not, whose sufferings were bad enough ... but were obviously not those of the genuine article.   You must have your reasons.  I respect you have them.  Yet not only I but many others here are not won over by what, after all, are hypotheses you cannot yet prove without having examined the remains lying somewhere in Siberia.

[olga]

Medical and historical fact in the subject under discussion in this thread have nothing to do with claimants.  You'll need to come up with a far better rebuttal than that.

Why are you so quick to think I'm questioning your posts*? Have I touched a claimant story nerve? You must have something to hide.

*I am, in case you couldn't guess.

[Belochka]

You probably have heard my name before.  You'll find it in the September 2004 issue of the American Journal of Hematology.

Mr Kendrick,

The paper in which you were fortunate to have published was presented as a Historical Perspective having the status of a curiosity. Such articles are often presented by non medical persons who are invited to write their interpretation on a matter which may have a modicum of interest to a few members of the Hematological community.

With respect, the nature of your paper stands alone within the J. The article is set apart from the scientific endeavors published in the same journal by researchers who do have medical training. Another important consideration which sets your article apart, is that the Hematological research is subject to a more critical standard of peer review prior to publication. Their facts must be substantiated and reproduceable. Their information must not be illusory.

Mr Kendrick, please correct me if I am mistaken, but you are not a qualified Hematologist are you?

With respect, it is somewhat unreasonable to give the impression that your "Historical Perspective" has the same meritorious standing as the accompaning  publications within the same J.

Many of us are aware that you maintain an interest with your claimant hypothesis concerning Mr Tammet, which your own website clearly demonstrates.

Mr Kendrick, it is not worthy of you to obfuscate your true intentions.

[Kimberly]

I dont consider bleeding umbilical stumps for up to six weeks as "fairly ordinary"

[Lass]

Some of you need to remember that something did not necessarily happen just because you've always believed it did. Be prepared to accept that you could be wrong, at least!

I do not know JKendrick's name from anywhere, but he has put across my thoughts on the issue in a much better way that I possibly could have done. Thank you!

[olga]

Lass, J_Kendrick's comments are not worth noticing, because he bases them entirely on his support of a claimant, namely Alexei Nikolaevich. Would he care if it was not for Heino Tammet?

[Lass]

Lass, J_Kendrick's comments are not worth noticing, because he bases them entirely on his support of a claimant, namely Alexei Nikolaevich. Would he care if it was not for Heino Tammet?

Well, I don't the reasons for his comments; I am not talking about claims, but about whether or not Alexei had haemophilia... Does it really matter what JK's motives are? Surely not, as far as this issue goes, at least.

[Pravoslavnaya]

Please bear in mind that these particular theories espoused by Mr. Kendrick were developed in the best interests of a false Alexei and as such serve ulterior motives - an elaborate attempt to explain away the Royal Disease known to have struck certain descendants of Queen Victoria for the sake of promoting the cause of a man that did not have hemophilia.

His melange of medical terms - aplastic anemia, thrombocytopenia, X-linked disorder, splenomegaly, central nervous system involvement... what have you - make too much of one particular episode that threatened Alexei Nikolaevich's life.  His further suggestions that one set of homologic symptoms can literally morph into the form of leukemia that took his claimant's life after what he claims was a period of long dormancy strike me as an unusual phenomenon foreign to responsible science.  Never has one disease of the blood mutated into another so completely different except in the wild speculations of someone so determined as this to fly in the face of the most logical explanation for what amounted for 14 years of suffering.

Remember, Alexei Nikolaevich's bruises could swell up into hematomas that forced his eyes closed as they did when he was a toddler (see a letter from the Dowager Empress Marie to the Tsar that discusses this), contorted his limbs as they did at three years old and later, and often sent him to bed, as the boy's own diaries testify.   Yet Mr. Kendrick chooses to ignore all empirical testimony by the Imperial Family, their tutors and even their captors that Alexei led the day to day life of a hemophiliac, regardless of whether he or his parents ever used the word in their letters and diaries.  An ordinary boy gets ordinary bumps and bruises and life goes on as always.   Doctors in attendance during the Spala episode were dismayed to find that their confidential discussions of Alexei's disease had been breached in 1912 when Reuters and the Associated Press leaked out the word 'hemophilia' in their newspaper articles.  In 1918 Yurovsky made the remark in one of his long narratives 'the boy has hemophilia', as if to say that this inconvenienced the Bolsheviks.

And Mr. Kendrick challenges me to find anything dated earlier than the death of the Tsarevich that mentions what disease he had.  It was an open secret that no one polite wanted to discuss in public what he had.

[olga]

Does it really matter what JK's motives are?

It does. He wrote that paper which he loves to refer to , and exists on this thread for the sole purpose of saying Alexei Nikolaevich did not have haemophilia. You see, Heino Tammet did not have haemophilia. See the links?  

[Lass]

I do indeed see the links. But on this thread we are not discussing claimants and how they will endeavour to prove their claims. JK's comments may be useful regardless of their motives, and I don't think you can write them off just because you do not like/approve/believe in their root reasons. Is that not so?

[Pravoslavnaya]

Oh, by the way --  the claims of William Lavery, the Scots headmaster who claimed to be the son of the mysterious Nikolai Chebotarev and Princess Marina of Kent, were proven by DNA testing to be false.  Blood Relative is nothing more but an interesting psychological study how a troubled man's search for his biological parents produced a sad take on the inevitable childhood abandonment fantasy, 'My real mother and father were a prince and princess'.

"Michael Gray" did borrow the term 'Thrombocytopenia' and mixed it in with his particular conspiracy theories surrounding the innocent young Tsarevich:  due to the necessity for any claimant to vehemently protest that Alexei did not have what history itself demonstrates he had.

[Lass]

Can't we forget all that? Really, that should be of no significance in a discussion about the Tsarevich's illness. I don't know about these people who you name, but I don't think that their claims, presumably supported by the idea that Alexei did not have haemophilia, should make any difference to our views on the issue.