In the Letters of the Rt. Rev. Casper Borgess, Bishop of Detroit, Michigan, is an account of a visit to Louise Lateau made in July, 1877. He says, "I first seated myself on the only chair in the room, which I had placed at the right side, near the head of the bed. Louise's two hands rested on several thicknesses of folded linen, spread over the bed-cover, and were covered with a folded linen cloth. This I removed. The hands were both heavily covered with blood; in some places it had congealed, and looked very dark; but in the centre, between the fore and little fingers, on the upper part of the hand, the blood was quite fresh and flowed freely. Not knowing at the time that the wiping of the hands causes her intense pain, I proceeded to wipe off the hands, for a more perfect inspection of the wound on each hand. The wound, or stigma, on the right hand seemed more than one inch in length, about half an inch at its greatest width, and was of oval shape. Turning the hand, I saw a wound of the same form in the palm of the hand, and opposite the wound on the back of the same. The blood seemed to rise in bubbles, forming in rapid succession, flowing in a spread stream down to the wrist. Examining the wound itself, I was well convinced that the skin of the hand was not broken nor in any way injured; and there was no sign of a wound made by any material instrument, sharp or dull. And, withal, the blood oozing out of the wound appeared a reality, and complete in form." The bishop evidently uses the term "wound" in a figurative sense, because he draws attention to the fact that the skin was intact, continuous. She bled from the dorsal and palmar surfaces of the hands in areas shaped like the wounds represented by painters on the hands of our Lord. While the bishop was examining her hands Louise went into an ecstatic condition. If the Church defines that a bloody sweat or the stigmata of a saint are supernatural, that definition, of course, ends the matter for Catholics as far as the particular case is concerned; {351} but until such a decision has been made these conditions are all to be regarded as effects of natural causes working in a natural manner.