Of course he did not know he suffered from the ‘royal disease’ and once the blood began to flow, it would not cease.
‘Ah yes, agitated plasma’ the doctor said, standing over the young Prince, ‘he needs to be bled.’
And one of the most puzzling things to me is how treatment for hemophilia in those days defied common sense.
For example, Rasputin was elevated to great power by supposedly using his mystical powers to treat the hemophilia of crown prince Alexei of Russia. In reality, Rasputin just told the royal doctors to leave Alexei alone and let him rest, as he was usually being poked, prodded, and experimented on around the clock. Once the doctors stopped jerking the prince around by the collar, he bled less and felt better, “confirming” Rasputin’s magic.
In reality he literally just told the best doctors in Russia to let the boy sleep through the night and relax a little. Mind blowing
I've heard it had to do with confirmation bias; for example, they thought that puss had to come out of a wound it would heal, so they purposely infected it, those who died, they thought would have died anyway and those who survived proved the treatment worked
Also the doctors were giving him blood thinners for some reason?
they were painkillers iirc, but acted as blood thinners
The doctors were giving him aspirin (or something analogous). Aspirin relieves pain by inhibiting an enzyme called cyclooxygenase (COX), which is one of the first steps of a signaling cascade that triggers inflammation. But it’s also the first step of a different signaling cascade that stimulates production of clotting factors. As a result, patients on aspirin are at risk of excess bleeding, which in the case of Alexei, would be life threatening.
That happened to my dad, in the 1980s. After a car accident, he was prescribed aspirin for pain. He had a history of stomach ulcers. He started to bleed internally and an airplane had to be diverted off schedule (isolated rural area) to take him to a city with a hospital. He survived, but it was pretty scary.
I heard one of the medicines Alexei had been prescribed was aspirin. And that doctor’s apprentice was the man who prepared the poison for Rasputin.
Fun fact: aspirin is also prescribed as a blood thinner. For a haemophiliac.
No wonder it didn't work then 💀
It was mostly aspirin. Low dose aspirin does that.
Also, to stop talking aspirin as well. Which is a blood thinner.
All because he was the crown prince and they were so worried. I'm happy we understand the dease more now. It was also queen Victoria's line that carried it. It would skip children and then all of sudden appear. No other royals had it till her.
Ah yes, the old "You have ghosts in your blood, you should do cocaine for it" medicine.
Great times. Sorely missed.
nice rhymes
Best one I've read.
Ra-ra-Rasputin 🤘🏻
Russia's favorite lover king!
I thought it was "Russia's greatest love machine"
Huh, I think both are used in the song, right?
Alexei Romanov?
Blame it on the inbreeding
Was this Flagg?
This horror story is all too true, and it's happened more than once.
After all, why run the risk of assassination when you can merely mention that an ill-informed doctor is very highly regarded in social circles?
No big loss...
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Hemophilia? Medieval medicine was really something else