Page:Vol 3 History of Mexico by H H Bancroft.djvu/780

760 additions at different times, notably from the tax of half a real on every Indian tributary, for whom the institution was intended. Furthermore, several special and general hospitals were erected in the capital, Cabrera describing nine in the middle of the last century, without counting private establishments; three were added by the beginning of the present cycle. Of these, three were cared for by the three charity orders of San Juan de Dios, San Hipólito, and the Bethlehemites, whose labors extended over the whole country, wherever the need for their special aid called them, and their means permitted the founding of hospitals. Mexico preponderated greatly, however, in the number both of hospitals and other benevolent institutions; to them the indigent sick and needy congregated from afar, and also the rich, who here found the best doctors and care.

Three of the hospitals were for the insane, a Magdalen asylum existed since the seventeenth century, and orphan asylums may be said to date from the time when Cortés opened his palace to a number of noble maidens and the early missionaries began to care for neglected children. Regular establishments to this end soon became numerous under royal, religious, and private patronage, with special attention to foundlings. The consideration for these castaway waifs was singularly