Illness and Death
In the summer of 1575, while he was in the town of Galapagar, Ferdinand became seriously ill with dysentery. The doctors found themselves unable to agree on the best treatment to be administered, and the king, who was in Madrid and kept constantly updated on his condition, advised that his son eat tortillas. Slowly he recovered but then relapsed three years later and died. He was six years old.
The title Prince of Asturias was then passed to his younger brother Diego but some years later he died of smallpox. After Ferdinand's death, his parents had another baby, this time a girl, Maria, who died when she was three years old.
His younger brother, the Infante Felipe was the only one of Anna's children to survive infancy, and in 1598, he succeed his father, as Philip III of Spain.
Read more about this topic: Ferdinand, Prince Of Asturias
Famous quotes containing the words illness and/or death:
“To you illness is negligible. You have learned that you can dominate yourself. You know that your body lags, but your soul proceeds upon its triumphant way.”
—Alice Foote MacDougall (1867–1945)
“All good biography, as all good fiction, comes down to the study of original sin, of our inherent disposition to choose death when we ought to choose life.”
—Rebecca West (1892–1983)