was consulted about Hjördis Sundblom, a five-year-old girl with a severe bleeding condition. Hjördis was the ninth of 11 children in a family from Föglö, one of the Åland Islands. She experienced regular bleeding from the nose, lips, gums and skin, as did six of her siblings. Three of her sisters had died due to the condition, and eight years later Hjördis died due to menorrhagia. Hjördis was brought to Von Willebrand's laboratory in Helsinki and he did not himself visit Föglö, but with the cooperation of a local schoolteacher he mapped the family pedigree. He found that the condition was present in the three previous generations, on both sides of Hjördis' family. 16 of the 35 women analysed had the condition (to a mild or severe degree), and 7 of the 31 men analysed had the condition (to a slight degree). An analysis of the heredity involved led Von Willebrand to assume the inheritance was dominant, in contrast to hemophilia which was known to be a recessive disorder. The condition also differed from hemophilia in that it affected females at least as often as males. He published a Swedish-language article in 1926 about the disease, titled Hereditär pseudohemofili ("Hereditary pseudohemophilia"). He referenced six previous publications from the years of 1876 to 1922, totalling 19 cases on families with bleeding diatheses. The earlier authors attributed the condition to hemophilia (even in the cases of females) or to thrombopathy, which was discovered shortly before as the cause of what had previously been known as purpura hemorrhagica or Werlhof's disease. Von Willebrand also conducted hematological examinations on Hjördis and some of her family members. He recorded a normal or slightly reduced number of platelets and an undisturbed clot retraction, unlike Glanzmann's thrombasthenia. The bleeding time (Duke) was greatly prolonged, extending to more than 2 hours in some cases, while the clotting time was within the normal range. He concluded that the disease was either a new form of thrombopathy or a condition of the capillary endothelium. Von Willebrand published a German-language version of Hereditär pseudohemofili in 1931, which attracted international attention in the disease. Blood samples were sent to researchers at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland, and to several researchers in Europe, including in Leipzig. Jürgens contacted Von Willebrand and together they conducted studies on his patients. They also researched hemorheology, seeking to understand the underlying mechanism of bleeding disorders.