Let us reason together and try if we can make head or tail of this extraordinary illness. The first certain fact about Philip II is that he long suffered from gout, apparently the real old-fashioned gout in the feet. In the well-known picture of him receiving a deputation of Netherlanders, as he sits in his tall hat beneath a crucifix, it is perfectly evident that he is suffering tortures from gout and wearing a large loosely fitting slipper. These unfortunate gentlemen seem to have selected a most unpropitious moment to ask favours, for there is no ailment that so warps the temper as gout. When a man suffers from gout over a period of years it is only a matter of time till his arteries and kidneys go wrong and he gets arterio-sclerosis. We may take it, therefore, as certain that at the age of seventy-two Philip had sclerosed arteries and probably chronic Bright’s disease like his father before him. Gout, Bright’s disease, and high blood-pressure, are all strongly hereditary, as every insurance doctor knows; that is to say, the son of a father who has died of one of these three is more likely than not to die ultimately of some cognate disease of arteries or kidneys or heart, all grouped together under the name of cardio-vascular-renal disease. But what about the “malignant tumours”? “Malignant tumour” to-day means cancer of one sort or another, and assuredly it was not cancer that killed Philip. Probably the word “tumour” simply meant “swelling.” Now, what could these painful swellings have been which ulcerated and smelt so horribly? Why not gangrene? Ordinary senile gangrene, such as occurs in arterio-sclerosis, neither causes swellings, nor is it painful, nor does it smell nor become verminous; but diabetic gangrene does all these things. Diabetes in elderly people may go on for many years undiscovered unless the urine be chemically examined, and may only cause symptoms when the arterio-sclerosis which generally complicates it gives results, such as sudden death from heart-failure, or diabetic gangrene. Thus a very famous Australian statesman, who had been known to have sugar in his urine for many years, was one morning found dead in his bath, evidently due to the high blood-pressure consequent on diabetic arterio-sclerosis.