PRINCE LEOPOLD'S DEATH.

Dunstan Times, Issue 1169, 25 July 1884, Page 3

PRINCE LEOPOLD'S DEATH.

It is not a little curious than the newspa pe. a remain dumb as to the cause of Prince La ipol-l’s death, and that an overwhelming nnj.irity of otherwise wellinformed people imagine that he was all through his life allictod with a disease from which he never suffered. It has oeen supposed that either his cutis or hU cuticle was of abnormal delicacy, and that this extreme tenuity ot the skin rendered him subject to accident from the slightest cause. I recollect distinctly that he walked with a stick up to the alter to be married, having met with a slight accident a few days before, fiis suffering on that occasion was, however, attributed to entirely the wrong cause. It is not a defective exterior integument which caused so much pain and trouble, but the defective CO- eriug of the blood-vessels. None of the coatings which compose veins anu arteries were actually deficient, but the middle tissue, between the outer and inner coats, was thin and poor. It was this defect which caused the frequent harmon-haues of which the public have heard so much, not any defect of the outer skin covering the body. The slightest fall or concussion was sufficient to rupture a vein au 1 cause profuse bleeding, requiring immediate treatment. In tbe opinion of those best qualified to form one it was unfortunate weakness of the blood-vessels which proved the cause of the Prince’s death. His fall at the Cede Nautiqus had evidently strained a hi -odvesael, p obably one of those at the ha eof the brain, wuich gave way during the night and caused death by apoplexy. There is, I know, a popular belief that apoplexy causes almost immediate death, out tliis is like the popular articles of faith, For the benefit of scientific readers 1 may 'tate that this strange deficiency m the coats of the bloodvessels, esp-cially the middle coat, is known as Haemorrhagic diathesis, or Jloemophiiia. —Correspondent of English paper.