The trouble approximated to the disease known in the United States and Canada as appendicitis and was of a character which made certainty as to recovery quite impossible and left the widest scope for fears and discussion and speculation. It was analysed by Dr. Cyrus Edson, a well-known New York physician, as follows: "Perityphlitis is inflammation, including the formation of an abscess of the tissues around the vermiform appendix and hence it is very hard to distinguish from appendicitis. Usually an operation is necessary to ascertain whether the appendix or the surrounding tissue is diseased." The King's physicians gave the public all the information they wisely could. The operation was performed by Sir Frederick Treves, the most eminent living surgeon in this connection, shortly after the first bulletin was issued and at six o'clock it was announced that "His Majesty continues to make satisfactory progress and has been much relieved by the operation." Five hours later the physicians stated that the King's condition was "as good as could be expected after so serious an operation." It would be some days, however, they added, before it would be possible to say he was out of danger. The doctors remained at Buckingham Palace all that night and but little news crept out from the silence surrounding the great pile of buildings to that stirring outer world which had grown so suddenly and strangely quiet. Following the startling announcement of the King's illness came the necessary statement that the Coronation ceremony was indefinitely postponed and the further intimation that the King himself had asked that celebrations in the Provinces outside London might be continued. In London, he had specified his wish, before the operation took place, that the dinner which was to be given to half-a-million of poor people should not be postponed and His Majesty had expressed keen sorrow, not at what he had already suffered himself or was likely to suffer, but at the disappointment which his people would everywhere feel. Gradually it came out that for over a week he had been ill; that the pain had been very great at times; that the physicians had acceded to his determination to go on with the ceremonies and the Coronation until longer delay in operation would have made the result fatal; that the King's one anxiety had been not to disappoint the millions who would be in London and the millions who would look on from abroad during the long-looked for event.