08/05/2025
“Did you know? The first recorded case of hemophilia in the United States was documented right here in Virginia—in 1791. A tragic yet fascinating piece of medical history. Thanks Chris for bringing this to light!”
On a quiet farm nestled along the banks of Cedar Creek in the Marlboro area of Frederick County, a tragedy unfolded in the spring of 1791 that would echo through the annals of medical history.
Nineteen-year-old Isaac Zoll was splitting wood on the family land when his axe slipped, catching his foot. It was a painful injury, but not one that should have been fatal. Yet as his family tried desperately to stop the bleeding, nothing worked. When they bound the wound, blood gushed instead from his mouth and nose. With each passing hour, they watched in helpless horror as Isaac slowly bled to death. He died on March 22, 1791.
That single incident would have been haunting enough—but it did not end there.
One by one, four of Isaac’s brothers would also die in eerily similar ways. One from the prick of a thorn. Another from a scratch by a curry comb. A third fell victim to the smallest of wounds from a sewing needle, and the fourth from a simple cut on the wrist. Minor injuries that should have healed instead ended in death. Something strange, something devastating, was happening in the Zoll family.
170 years passed before the mystery began to make sense.
In 1962, Dr. Victor McKusick, a pioneering geneticist at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, examined the case in a landmark hematology article. He identified Isaac Zoll’s death as the earliest known record of hemophilia in America. His research caught the attention of other physicians, and in 1975, Dr. Paul Didisheim affirmed McKusick’s findings in the Rochester Medical Journal, stating clearly: “The Zoll case is indeed the first report of hemophilia in the United States.”
The pattern of the brothers’ deaths aligned perfectly with what scientists now understand as X-linked recessive inheritance—a trait passed from mother to son. Intriguingly, all five sons who died of bleeding complications were born to Mr. Zoll’s first wife, who herself died during childbirth, never knowing that she had passed along a genetic condition that science wouldn’t even name for another century.
The story of the Zoll family—painful, perplexing, and profound—remains not only a footnote in American medical history but a powerful testament to the hidden legacies carried silently through generations. What began as an unexplained family tragedy on a farm in Marlboro became the foundation for a deeper understanding of a rare and devastating disorder.
