PRINCE’S BLOOD MALADY

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 165, 3 October 1927, Page 7

PRINCE’S BLOOD MALADY

HEIR TO SPANISH THRONE Much concern has lately been felt for what has been described as the “serious and even desperate condition” of the Prince of the Asturias, heir to the Spanish Throne. His state is due to haemophilia, a disease whose sufferers are known as “bleeders.” There is a popular belief that the abnormal tendency to serious haemorrhage on very slight provocation is the result of the victim being born with one skin missing. The affliction has in reality nothing to do with the skin; it is an heriditary abnormality in the composition of the blood. The exact nature of this abnormality can be surmised, but the reason of its hereditary nature has so far baffled all investigators. It descends in the female line. A bleeder is a person who bleeds prof usely from any slight injury, and the resulting haemorrhage is exeremely difficult to arrest. Bleeders usually have very bad teeth, but the exraction of a tooth is a most perilous adventure, from which few really bad bleeders ever recover Always Serious Anxiety There are, of course, degrees of severity in haemophilia. The worst cases are those which appear in early infancy. Apart from the risk to life occasioned by profuse external bleeding, a bleeder is a chronic invalid, who is a source of very serious anxiety to all concerned, for he may at any moment suffer from a profuse internal haemorrhage. These internal haemorrhages are specially liable to attack the joints, and if they are frequently repeated they cause very pronounced crippling. Haemophilia came into our Royal family through Queen Victoria’s mother, the Duchess of Kent. Only one of the Queen’s sons, the Duke of Albany, suffered from the disease, but some of her daughters transmitted it.. The little Tsarevitch, who was so brutally murdered, is one instance of such transmission, and the Prince of the Asturias is another, but the disease has completely passed out of the English Royal family.