Only this #1 issue was published?

Item # 701585

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July 01, 1864

THE LEECH, Union College, Schenectady, New York, July, 1864

* "Bogus" student publication
* Anti-Laurens Perseus Hickok

This short-lived title has an unusual masthead showing two men facing away from viewer. Much of the content is directed at L.P. Hickock, referred to at one point as "Old Hick," and the last page contains a review of Hickock's Rational Cosmology.
Only this single issue--volume 1, number 1--is known to have been printed. An item at the bottom of the last page would seem to confirm this: "Valedictory" "We now take leave of the public. If the evils we have reproved are not remedied, we shall draw more blood next year; for the present we are full and now top off; we, a leech, have got through sucking asses."
Twelve pages, 9 1/2 by 12 inches, never bound nor trimmed with wide margins, several pages are still connected at the top, very nice, clean condition.

background: This twelve-page rarity from July 1864 represents a classic "bogus" student publication, a satirical genre born from the friction between rigid 19th-century academic discipline and the burgeoning wit of the Union College student body. Defined by its peculiar masthead of two figures turned away from the public eye—a clever nod to the editors' necessary anonymity—the paper serves as a focused, vitriolic broadside against Laurens Perseus Hickok ("Old Hick"), the college's acting president and a prominent philosopher of the era. The content oscillates between personal lampoonery and academic critique, culminating in a mocking review of Hickok’s dense 1858 work, Rational Cosmology. The publication’s blunt "Valedictory" confirms its status as a single-issue strike, with the editors crudely likening their departure to a satiated leech that has finished "sucking asses." Given its limited distribution and the specific historical snapshot it provides of Union College during the Civil War era.