Read about It. Рахимбергенова М.Х. - 34 стр.

       Alexis was the center of this united family, the focus of all its    cret tragedy of her life. How easy it was to reconstruct the stages of that
hopes and affections. His sisters worshipped him. He was his parents»       long Calvary.»
pride and joy. When he was well, the palace was transformed. Everyone              Hemophilia is as old as man. It has come down through the cen-
and everything in it seemed bathed in sunshine.                             turies, misted in legend, shrouded with the dark dread of a hereditary
       From the beginning, the disease of hemophilia hung over this         curse. On the Egypt of the Pharaohs, a woman was forbidden to bear
sunny child like a dark cloud. The first ominous evidence had appeared      further children if her firstborn son bled to death from a minor wound.
at six weeks, when the boy bled from his navel. As he began to crawl               Because over the last one hundred years it has appeared in the
and toddle, the evidence grew stronger: his tumbles caused large, dark      ruling houses of Britain, Russia and Spain, it has been called «the royal
blue swellings on his legs and arms. When he was three and a half, a        disease.» It remains one of the most mysterious and malicious of all the
blow on the face brought a swelling which completely closed both eyes.      genetic, chronic disease. Even today, both the cause and the cure are
       Medically, hemophilia meant that the Tsarevich’s blood did not       unknown. Hemophilia follows no geographical or racial pattern; it ap-
clot normally. Instead of clotting quickly as it would in a normal per-     pears on all continents, in all races at a statistical ratio of one hemophil-
son, the blood continued to flow unchecked for hours, making a swell-       iac among every 10,000 males.
ing or hematoma as big as a grapefruit. The worst pain and the perma-              If Alexandra was surrounded by hemophilic relatives before she
nent crippling effects of Alexis’s hemophilia came from bleeding into       married, so were most of the princesses of Europe. So numerous were
the joints. Blood entering the confined space of an ankle, knee or elbow    Queen Victoria’s royal progeny – nine children and thirty-four grand-
joint caused pressure on the nerves and brought nightmarish pain.           children – that the defective gene had been spread far and wide. In mar-
Sometimes the cause of the injury was apparent, sometimes not. In ei-       rying and having children, hemophilia was considered one of the haz-
ther cases, Alexis awakened in the morning to call, «Mama, I can’t walk     ards royal parents faced, along with diphtheria, pneumonia, smallpox
today,» or «Mama, I can’t bend my elbow.» Morphine was available,           and scarlet fever.
but because of its destructive habit-forming quality, the Tsarevich was            In that era, every family, including royal families, had a long
never given the drug. His only release from pain was fainting.              string of children and expected to lose one or two in the process of
       «One morning I found the mother at her son’s bedside.» – wrote       growing up. The death of a child was never a casual experience, but it
Pierre Gilliard, Swiss tutor of the Tsarevich Alexis. «He had had a very    rarely brought the life of a family to more than a temporary halt. Never-
bad night. Dr. Derevenko was anxious as the hemorrhage had not              theless, in Alexandra’s case the mere threat of death to her youngest
stopped and his temperature was rising. The inflammation had spread         child involved her totally, and through her, the fate of an ancient dy-
and the pain was worse than the day before. The Tsarevich lay in bed        nasty and the history of a great nation. Why was this so?
groaning piteously. His head rested on his mother’s arm and his small,             It is important to understand what the birth of Alexis meant to
deadly white face was unrecognizable. At times the groans ceased and        Alexandra. Her greatest desire after her marriage had been to give the
he murmured the one word, «Mummy.» His mother kissed him on the             Russian autocracy a male heir. Over the next ten years, she had four
hair, forehead, and eyes as if the touch of her lips would relieve him of   daughters, each healthy, charming and loved, but still not an Heir to the
his pain and restore some of the life which was leaving him. Think of       Throne. Each time Alexandra became pregnant, she prayed fervently for
the torture of that mother, an important witness of her son’s martyrdom     a boy. Each time, it seemed, her prayers were ignored. When Anastasia,
in those hours of anguish – a mother who knew that she herself was the      their fourth daughter, was born, Nicholas had to leave the palace and
cause of those sufferings, that she had transmitted the terrible disease    walk in the park to overcome his dissapointment before facing his wife.
against which human science was powerless. Now I understood the se-         The birth of the Tsarevich, therefore, meant far more to his mother than
                                                                            the arrival of just another child. This baby was the crowning of her mar-

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