Hospital de San Lázaro de México: three centuries of leprosy care, twice destroyed by the authorities that ran it

A leprosarium founded at Mexico City in the first years after the conquest, pulled down within a decade by the president of the audiencia who wanted the site, refounded by a physician in 1572, made family property by his will, handed to the Order of San Juan de Dios in 1721, rebuilt at fourteen times the sum promised, secularised in 1787 and finally emptied in 1862 to save the city money. Its endowed capacity was 44 beds; a printed return of 1774 records 113 patients in five years.