two answers here:
1. I personally find it beyond amusing that Mr. Kendrick who is not a medical expert but rather, self admitted, a JOURNALIST, finds that his own profession is highly unreliable as a source. res ipsa loquitor Mr. Kendrick.
2: Spiridovitch, "Les Dernieres Annees..." Vol 2. ch. 12 "The Year 1912" translation by Rob Moshein, copyright.
"However, at Byelovyezhe, Derevenko was not able to prevent harm to the Tsarevtich. One day, while he was taking his bath, the boy began to engage in all kinds of mischief. It was a large porcelain bathtub, sunk into the floor and which one got into by several steps on each side and the bathtub had a fairly sharp edge all along its top. The Tsarevtich had climbed onto the edge of the bathtub wanting to show Derevenko how the sailors on the Standardt would jump off the side of the yacht into the sea to go swimming. He jumped and fell onto the side of the bathtub. It hurt him, but without doubt the pain was not very great because he did not say anything afterward. However, only a few minutes later, he lost conscience and they carried his nearly inanimate body to his bed.
This accident in a healthy boy would not have had any unfortunate results, but it was for him, who suffered from hemophilia, the start of many severe complications that could never be totally healed. He was bleeding severely internally.
As always, the illness was assiduously hidden to the entourage. They did not feel it necessary to call in a specialist doctor. They put him totally under the care of the family doctor, Botkin. It was the Empress herself who directed his treatment. They cancelled the concerts which the Cavalry Regimental band, whose squadron formed the military guard of the Palace, would give during lunch and dinner. The Tsarevtich was very upset at that, begged them to resume the concerts, but his request was in vain.
When he became better, a Cossack from the escort was ordered to carry him around in his arms. The child suffered greatly and everyone felt his illness.
So it was under these conditions which we left Byelovyezhe for Spala on September 16th
...
However a new misfortune soon arrived. Immediately after some bumps that he took while on a promenade in a caleche with the Empress, his health worsened. The internal bleeding was even worse, and the swelling in his groin increased in size so much so that the child was confined to his bed. He suffered incredibly. His cries and moans echoed often throughout the Palace, and his fever steadily grew. Botkin never left him for a moment, but did not know what he could do to bring him relief. His pain grew so bad that the sick child would not permit the swelling to be touched. He slept on his side, leg folded, pale, thin and never stopped moaning.
They called the surgeon Serge Petrovitch Fyedorov from Petersburg, and the old Rauchfuss. They arrived on October 4th, the night before Alexis Nicholaiovitch's Name's day. The illness got worse. October 6th, his temperature rose to over 39 degrees (102 F.) and would not go down. After a consultation, the doctors declared that that the situation was desperate. Fyedorov said that he had decided not to open the swelling, given that they would be operating on the inheritor of the throne, and the operation would bring on fatal bleeding. Only a miracle could save the child's life, he said. And when they asked him what that miracle might be, he responded by shrugging his shoulders and said that the swelling might spontaneously be reabsorbed, but that the chance of that actually happening was only less than one in a hundred.
After this diagnosis, the Minister of the Court was permitted to publish bulletins on the health of the Tsarevitch. The first bulletin was dated October 8th. They began to hold services in Spala to pray for a cure for the Tsarevitch. In the Palace they would hear of no other help from the doctors, and only believed in God. They gave the last rites to the child. The catastrophe was expected from one day to the next. The suffering child was plainly aware that his death was near.
"Mama, don't forget to put a little monument on my tomb when I'm dead" he whispered one day into his mother's ear, who crazy with suffering, would not leave his side for an instant. (Sabline told me this later, who had been told it from the Empress herself.)
It seemed that all was over. The crisis approached. And it was at this critical moment that Their Majesties received a telegram from Rasputin which read:
"The illness will not be dangerous. Do not let the doctors make him tired."
In a second telegram, the "staryets" said that he had prayed, that God had heard his prayers and had granted them.
And then an incredible thing happened: the Tsarevitch began to get better and to go into recovery.
His mother, in all her happiness, saw only one thing: his health had come back from her "friend", and it had been his prayers that had saved the life of her child.
From that moment on, the Empress's faith in Rasputin was unshakeable and there was no force in the world that would ever alienate the "staryets" from the friendship of the Imperial Family.
