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Friday, May 20, 2011

HAEMOPHILIA- The Royal Disease





Haemophilia is an inherited blood clotting deficiency as old as civilization and is legendary, having come down through centuries, tied with the dark thread of hereditary curse. The disease affects males but is transmitted by females, characterizing excess and mostly spontaneous bleeding caused by cuts and falls. Painful and permanent crippling effects come from bleeding into the confined space of the joints that pressurize the nerves resulting in nightmarish pain and ultimate disability. Exceptions, however, are internal haemorrhages in the mouth or nose , though painless can cause death. Thus haemophilia is a fickle disease.

Queen Victoria, the tiny indomitable woman who ruled England for sixty four years and was ' Granny' to most of Europe's Royalty, was unknowingly at her marriage a haemophiliac carrier. The youngest of her four sons Prince Leopold, Prince of Albany had haemophilia. Two of her five daughters Princess Alice and Princess Beatrice were haemophilic carriers and later when their daughters married into royal houses of Russia and Spain, the heirs to those two thrones were born with haemophilia. Thus Alexandra, Princess of Hesse-Darmstadt was surrounded by haemophilic relatives before she married Tsar Nicholas II of Russia and unknowingly gave birth to a haemophilic child on August 12,1904. Tsarevich Alexis, heir to the Russian throne was accorded tumultuous welcome with a three hundred cannons salute, church bells and waving of flags and became the most famous and pitiable haemophiliac in history. His sufferings were excruciatingly painful and cause of anguish to Tsar Nicholas and Tsarina Alexandra who in despair sought spiritual and miraculous help and cure from Gregory Rasputin. Termed as the ' Mad Monk' , Rasputin was an illiterate and satanic peasant,a rapist and sex maniac and wielded clout to the extent that whenever the Tsarevich recovered, both Nicholas and Alexandra blindly attributed the recovery to Rasputin's Power of Prayer. Thus the relationship of the Tsar and intimacy of the lovely Tsarina with the holy evil were frowned upon by the Russians, specially the elite rebels. This hastened the end of monarchy in Russia.

Soon,the entire royal family was imprisoned and humiliated in the bitter cold of Siberia and finally on July 16, 1918,pushed mercilessly into a dungeon, shot at point blank, the bodies mutilated with bayonets, faces disfigured with acid and consigned to flames to wipe out traces of their very existence. So the curse of haemophilia took its toll and ended the largest monarchy of the world. The love story of Nicholas and Alexandra, their rule of Russia with deep concern for the heir apparent, the infatuation for Rasputin and the realm they lost has been vividly portrayed by Robert K. Massie, an American journalist and author in his so apocalyptic and bizzare book " Nicholas and Alexandra". The work has been inspired by his only son who is or was a haemophiliac.

Incidentally, Abraham Lincoln and Mother Teresa were rumored haemophiliacs but the ailment in no way hampered their vision to survive, accomplish and serve suffering humanity.

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