The province, considering the great service which is performed for our Lord in the cure of the sick, and that its evangelical ministers ought to attend to the spiritual necessities of all and to the corporal needs of the poor, began to establish some hospitals in this new [field of the] conversion, entrusting so apostolic a ministry to a lay-brother of proved virtue called Fray Juan Clemente. That religious, with singular charity, collected some alms among the Spaniards, and began to treat the poor Spaniards in a wretched nipa house. Since the order of our father St. Francis may not hold property and have the management of money, therefore that hospital, like the others founded by the province, was placed under the royal protection. God took to himself a Spaniard who had one of the best cattle-ranches in this kingdom. That Spaniard made confession and deposited his will with father Fray Agustín de Tordesillas, one of the first founders of this province. Father Fray Agustín counseled that Spaniard to leave his ranch to the royal hospital of the Spaniards, since he had no children and the hospital was so poor. The Spaniard did so, so that the poor had thereby the milk necessary for their sicknesses, for milk is, as a general rule, the delicacy that is prescribed to the sick in this kingdom. This province founded another hospital, in the port of Cavite, for the relief and cure of the seamen in that port and of the natives who live there. For its support and comfort they founded another ranch, likewise of the larger cattle, the land on which that ranch was established being given by some Spaniards and some natives, by the advice and efforts of the religious. The same Fray Juan Clemente founded another hospital outside the walls of the city of Manila, which is called "the hospital of the natives;" for there the Indian natives who go thither because they have not the wherewithal to cure themselves are treated--and they are many. The same religious founded another ranch for its support, commencing it with some calves which he begged as an alms. In the same manner was founded also the hospital of Los Baños, with two other ranches. In the city of [Nueva] Cáçeres, the religious have founded another hospital, with another large ranch. Within the city of Manila, the brotherhood of the Santa Misericordia built another hospital, where poor negro slaves are treated, through their alms. Most of the negroes would doubtless die miserably if the Santa Misericordia did not piously aid them in so great need. The Misericordia entrusted their hospital to our religious, who administered it most willingly, as it was for poor creatures so orphaned and destitute.