At the time of the Independence, Lima had many hospitals under the management of religious brotherhoods. Belem and San Juan de Dios received inmates at a fixed price of one dollar a day; and an English traveller, who was a patient in the San Juan de Dios hospital a century ago, has written a very favorable description of its cleanliness, good ventilation, excellent diet, and the kind attention given to patients. The hospital of San Andrés had accommodation for six hundred invalids and capacity for twice that number, and was beautified by a magnificent garden of rare botanical value. Santa Ana hospital, founded by an Indian princess, the Caciqua Catalina Huanca, was consecrated to the needs of her own people. Two hospitals, San Pedro de Alcantara and La Caridad, were for women exclusively; and the sick and suffering among the negro population were cared for in the hospital of San Bartolomé. By a law passed in 1825, all the establishments organized by public charity, and at that time in charge of the convents, were placed under the administration of a _Junta de Beneficencia_, or Board of Benevolence, which was later replaced by the Benevolent Societies, under whose control are all the charitable institutions of the republic. There are about fifty of these societies, each of which maintains and governs one or more charitable establishments, the annual expenditure for this purpose being two hundred and fifty thousand pounds sterling. Lima spends more than half of this amount in the support of its hospitals and asylums. The revenues are derived from grants of the national government and the departmental boards, from the rents of the societies’ various properties, from the profits of the public lotteries,—established during the viceroyalty, and, by the decree of the republic, devoted to charitable purposes,—and from the income derived from cemeteries, which are under the administration of the Benevolent Society. In Lima the lotteries provide a large fund for the purposes of charity, the annual income from this source amounting to from thirty thousand to forty thousand pounds sterling.