The old hospital of San Bartolomé was converted into a military hospital after the establishment of the republic; it affords accommodation for three hundred patients, and its expenses are paid by the state, only the administration of its affairs being in charge of the Benevolent Society. There is a special ward in the military hospital for prisoners awaiting trial. The only conditions required of an applicant for admission to the hospitals of the Benevolent Society are that the illness shall be of a common nature, and that the poverty of the applicant must be proved. The question of nationality or religion is not considered. The society maintains an asylum for incurable invalids, to which are sent those cases declared chronic or incurable by the attending physicians. The asylums maintained by the Benevolent Society of Lima accomplish great good among a class that is generally neglected. The Orphan Asylum has two branches, one of which is for the care and protection of foundlings, and the other for the education of orphan children of tender age. The first is located in a large building, which has a revolving cradle so arranged that, as soon as the infant is placed in it, a mechanism carries the cradle inside, the little one’s identity being completely lost as it passes from a world that offered no welcome to the shelter of a home that receives it as a sacred charge. About two hundred children live in the foundlings’ home, which is provided with nurses, doctors, and the usual service of a well-regulated household. The second branch of the Orphan Asylum gives practical instruction suitable for children who are to earn their living later. The boys are taught some trade, the workshops of the institution including those for the instruction of shoemakers, carpenters, tailors, and printers; the girls, as soon as old enough to learn, are sent to Santa Teresa to be instructed in sewing, embroidering, millinery, and other handiwork. Near the hospital of Santa Teresa is located the Asylum of Santa Rosa, supported out of the funds of the Benevolent Society, supplemented by the amounts received from the sale of embroideries, fine sewing, artificial flowers, and other articles made by the inmates. In the asylum of San Andrés, which in 1879 replaced the hospital of that name, both boarding and day pupils are included in the benefits of charity, the former numbering about a hundred children, and the latter three times as many, of both sexes, between three and eight years of age. Instruction is given in household work and in other practical subjects, the children, at the same time, learning to read and write. A _crèche_ has been established where infants may be left during the day in charge of a corps of nurses, while the mothers are at work.