A hemorrhage usually results from either a severe blow to the body or from medication being taken for something else. Though many hemorrhages aren't particularly serious, those that occur in the brain (cerebral hemorrhages) can be life-threatening. In older people, hemorrhages are often caused by blood-thinning medication taken to prevent heart attacks. A bruise (or hematoma) is a hemorrhage close enough to the surface of the skin to be visible. Hemorrhage is also a verb, which isn't always used to talk about actual blood; thus, we may hear that a business is hemorrhaging money, or that the U.S. has been hemorrhaging industrial jobs for decades. Be careful when writing hemorrhage; it's not an easy word to spell.