The Royal Disease is hemophilia. It is sometimes called by this name because it afflicted many royal families. The National Hemophilia Foundation or NHF states that, "This is because Queen Victoria, Queen of England from 1837 to 1901, was a carrier. She passed the disease on to several royal families" (b. p.1). Her son Leopold had hemophilia and died of a brain hemorrhage. It was also passed into the Russian, Spanish, and German royal families because Queen Victoria's daughters married into them. Not everyone knows what this disease is. It is not widely known exactly how it works or what all the symptoms are. There are treatments for this disease but not all are completely safe ones. Attitudes towards hemophilia vary, so do the attitudes of actual hemophiliacs. Hemophilia can be a very disabling disease with painful symptoms and harsh treatments.
             Hemophilia is a blood disorder. It is caused by a deficiency in clotting factors. Clotting factors are what make it possible for a person to stop bleeding once a blood vessel has been severed. There are two types of hemophilia. Hemophilia A is caused by low or complete absence of factor VIII [Roman numeral for 8] clotting protein. Hemophilia B is also known as Christmas Disease after Steven Christmas who died ultimately from it. It is caused by a lack or absence of factor IX [9]. Hemophilia B is the less common of the two. Hemophilia is largely an inherited disease but not always. "Approximately 70% of people with hemophilia A or B inherited the disease, while the remaining 30% develop hemophilia due to a spontaneous genetic mutation" (Carson-DeWitt, 1999 p. 1). It is inherited on the X chromosome. Remember that females have XX and males have XY. That is why hemophilia "occurs almost exclusively in males, and affects one in 10,000 of the general population (1 in 3000 male births)" (Evatt, Gibbs, Lewis, and McArthur, 1992 p. 12). Females with an infected X...