The Romanovs

Tsarevich Alexei almost dies at Spala

While life, from the outside, seemed to follow a normal course, a drama was unfolding, which was carefully hidden from all but those closest, in the interior apartments of the Palace: the illness of the Tsarevich.
He had already begun to recover bit by bit from his fall at Byelovyezhe. He was only treated by Botkin alone, again only nominally so, as in reality they let the illness take its natural course and placed the rest in God's hands. They would not let the child walk, Derevenko carried him in his arms.
When the weather was good, they would promenade around Spala in a little carriage drawn by a horse. He was usually accompanied by the old Prince Tumanov, whom he greatly loved.
The Tsarevich's health appeared to have improved to the point that they called his teachers, Petrov and Gilliard, to Spala.
However a new misfortune soon arrived. Immediately after some bumps that he took while on a promenade in a caleche with the Empress, his health worsened. The internal bleeding was even worse, and the swelling in his groin increased in size so much so that the child was confined to his bed. He suffered incredibly. His cries and moans echoed often throughout the Palace, and his fever steadily grew. Botkin never left him for a moment, but did not know what he could do to bring him relief. His pain grew so bad that the sick child would not permit the swelling to be touched. He slept on his side, leg folded, pale, thin and never stopped moaning.
They called the surgeon Serge Petrovitch Fyedorov from Petersburg, and the old Rauchfuss. They arrived on October 4th, the night before Alexis Nicholaiovich's Name's day. The illness got worse. October 6th, his temperature rose to over 39 degrees (102 F.) and would not go down. After a consultation, the doctors declared that that the situation was desperate. Fyedorov said that he had decided not to open the swelling, given that they would be operating on the inheritor of the throne, and the operation would bring on fatal bleeding. Only a miracle could save the child's life, he said. And when they asked him what that miracle might be, he responded by shrugging his shoulders and said that the swelling might spontaneously be reabsorbed, but that the chance of that actually happening was only less than one in a hundred.
After this diagnosis, the Minister of the Court was permitted to publish bulletins on the health of the Tsarevich. The first bulletin was dated October 8th. They began to hold services in Spala to pray for a cure for the Tsarevich. In the Palace they would hear of no other help from the doctors, and only believed in God. They gave the last rites to the child. The catastrophe was expected from one day to the next. The suffering child was plainly aware that his death was near.
"Mama, don't forget to put a little monument on my tomb when I'm dead" he whispered one day into his mother's ear, who crazy with suffering, would not leave his side for an instant. (Sabline told me this later, who had been told it from the Empress herself.)
It seemed that all was over. The crisis approached. And it was at this critical moment that Their Majesties received a telegram from Rasputin which read:
"The illness will not be dangerous. Do not let the doctors make him tired."
In a second telegram, the "staryets" said that he had prayed, that God had heard his prayers and had granted them.
And then an incredible thing happened: the Tsarevich began to get better and to go into recovery.
His mother, in all her happiness, saw only one thing: his health had come back from her "friend", and it had been his prayers that had saved the life of her child.
From that moment on, the Empress's faith in Rasputin was unshakeable and there was no force in the world that would ever alienate the "staryets" from the friendship of the Imperial Family.
The improvement coming about in the Tsarevich's health brought some life back into the hunting, which had begun to languish. They invited, from Varsovie, two or three times, members of the local Polish aristocracy, who would come each time along with the Governor General, and the Governor who had also both been invited.

During the month of November, the Tsarevich's health was improving satisfactorily, so they began to talk about returning to Tsarskoie Selo. Soon afterward, it was decided finally to depart.
They traveled with extraordinary precautions. Before the train left the station in Olen, Gen. Dyedyuine conveyed an order from the Empress to Gen. Hesketh, the director of the Vistula Railroad, they everything must be done such that the trip would be without any bumps as the slightest one might be dangerous to the sick Tsarevich.
Hesketh, who had immediately prior directed the Trans-Caspian railroad, where he had been the target of two assassination attempts, had given the Vistula trains an ideal organization, told the engineer of the train that he should not use the brakes to stop the train. This recommendation was followed throughout the trip and nothing more could have been desired: the Tsarevich was not the least bit sickened during the entire trip. And when, leaving the Malkine station, the train passed onto the Northwest railroad line, the Empress ordered Dyedyuline to thank Gen. Hesketh in her name for the excellent precautions he had taken.
(Gen. Hesketh's father, David T. Hesketh was a member of the English nobility, the Count of Lancashire, and had been the teacher to Princes Constantine and Alexander of Oldenburg. In the middle of the 19th Century he became a Russian subject and officer in the Therek Cossacks. Along with his rank he received a hereditary Russian noble title.)
The same procedure recommended by Gen. Hesketh was ordered to Chamberlain Valuyev, director of the Northwest railroad.
During the entire trip, the sick child was under the constant care of Dr. Dyeryevenko, assisted by Prof. Fyoderov, who they had come directly to Spala from Petersburg. Dyeryevenko (whose name is spelled closely to that of the Tsarevich's attendant) was a capable and clever man. He immediately pleased the Empress by his simplicity as very few people did. He performed his dues conscientiously and he only regretted that they had waited to long to have thought to place the Tsarevich under the constant surveillance of a specialist physician. This is the fact they wanted to hide, however, from those who were more or less current about what was happening in the Court.
After the return to Tsarskoie Selo, they called Prof. Wreden to the Tsarevich. As one of his closest friends told me, the Professor was scared and discouraged by the state of health in which he found the sick little child, which was the fault of lack of necessary care for him.
There was a large swelling in the groin, his leg was in an unnatural position, the pain was so strong that even the lightest touch made during an examination of him caused the child to scream terribly.
His treatment was confined to Prof. Wreden. He had the impression that that they had feared before then to resort to an orthopaedic treatment, as they were waiting for a cure by other means whose nature escaped him. The doctors, before Wreden, who had cared for the Tsarevich had not dared to tell the Emperor the truth.
The Professor began to come every day and he decided that it was not possible to correct the problem with his leg without such a necessary treatment, so he set out to win the confidence and affection of the child. A very happy man, a remarkable story-teller, the Professor succeeded by playing checkers with him and talking about this or that with him. The child ended up by really having an affection for him, and after about fifteen days his confidence in him was so great that he allowed him, without difficulty or resistance, to correct his leg problem.
Wreden found it necessary to put the leg into a corrective device. Wearing the device was unpleasant for the Tsarevich and the Empress protested against them using it. However Wreden was firm and unmovable, and said that they could not expose the child to the risk of remaining lame, and he said that above all, as the child was going to become the Emperor of Russia, and as his doctor he was completely accountable for the responsibility he had assumed in that regard, he absolutely insisted on the use of the device he had prescribed.
Wreden without a doubt spoke with a brutal frankness that displeased her.
One day when he was presented at the Palace, he was received by the Emperor, who thanked him for the services he had rendered, named him as an honorary Court Physician, and then dispensed with any further visits by him. From then on, until right up to the war, Wreden was never called a single time to the Tsarevich.
However the device prescribed by Wreden was itself applied, and it was part of the treatment plan, and it was Dr. Dyeryevenko who was charged to make sure of and oversee its use.