Under the name of Santo Toribio an hospital for incurable patients was established in the year 1669, by Don Domingo Cueto.
In 1702 it was consigned to the superintendence of an order of monks, called the padres Belemitas, and in 1822 it was incorporated with the hospital of San Lazaro. The latter establishment was founded by Anton Sanchez, in the year 1563, and was exclusively destined for leprous patients. Persons afflicted with cutaneous diseases, and especially maladies of a contagious nature, are sent thither.
In the convent of San Pedro there is a small hospital for poor priests. Attached to it is a dispensary, from whence the poor were supplied gratuitously with medicines, at the time when the convent was in the possession of the Jesuits.
Lima also possesses a Foundling Hospital. Luis Ojeda, who humbly took to himself the title of _Luis el Pecador_ (Luis the Sinner), bequeathed all his fortune to the foundation of this establishment, which received the name of "Collegio de Santa Cruz de los niños expositos."[8]
The refuge for female penitents was founded in the year 1670 by the viceroy, Count de Lemos. The funds were derived from a legacy bequeathed for that object by Don Francisco Arcain in 1572. The establishment has but few inmates.
In former times it was the custom in Lima to bury the dead in graves dug within the churches; but the heat of the climate, and the difficulty of making the graves sufficiently deep, rendering this practice exceedingly objectionable, the viceroy, Don Jose Fernando Abascal, determined on making a burial place beyond the boundaries of the city. A piece of ground was allotted for the purpose, and it was consecrated on the 1st of January, 1808. It is called the _Cementerio gèneral_ or _Panteon_, and is situated eastward of the city on the high road leading to the Sierra de Tarma. It consists of two gardens, very prettily planted, and inclosed by high walls. Along the walls, on the inner side, there are niches, about a thousand in number, ranged in sixteen different classes, and they may be purchased by those who wish to possess them. Many of them belong to families and convents. The graves are watched and kept in order by criminals who are condemned to this duty as a punishment. It is calculated that it will be five years before this cemetery is filled. When room is wanting, the niches which have been first occupied will be cleared, and the bones deposited in a bone-house, of simple but appropriate construction. At the entrance of the Panteon there is a neat little chapel, where the funeral obsequies are performed. Burials are permitted to take place only in the morning; and when a funeral retinue arrives too late, the body remains uninterred until the following morning. The rich are buried in coffins, the poor merely in winding sheets, which are made after the pattern of the habits worn by the barefooted friars of the order of San Francisco.