Hemophilia Hemophilia is a genetically inherited bleeding disorder which is caused when one of the plasma proteins (needed to clot) is missing or abnormally formed in the blood. The word Hemophilia comes from the Latin word hemo, meaning blood and the word philia, meaning: having a tendency towards. Knowledge of hemophilia has been around since biblical times (due to the age of hemophilia it is uncertain who the exact founder of the disease is) but it wasn't until the 1960's that scientists began to make new advances towards figuring out what hemophilia was. There are two types of hemophilia: hemophilia A or factor VIII deficiency, and hemophi