A graduate of the class of 1828 writes:  “I well remember that my invitation to attend the meeting of the Med.  Fac.  Soc. was written in barbarous Latin, commencing ‘Domine Crux,’ and I think I passed so good an examination that I was made Professor longis extremitatibus, or Professor with long shanks.  It was a society for purposes of mere fun and burlesque, meeting secretly, and always foiling the government in their attempts to break it up.”

The members of the Society were accustomed to array themselves in masquerade dresses, and in the evening would enter the houses of the inhabitants of Cambridge, unbidden, though not always unwelcome guests.  This practice, however, and that of conferring degrees on public characters, brought the Society, as is above stated, into great disrepute with the College Faculty, by whom it was abolished in the year 1834.

The Catalogue of the Society was a burlesque on the Triennial of the College.  The first was printed in the year 1821, the others followed in the years 1824, 1827, 1830, and 1833.  The title on the cover of the Catalogue of 1833, the last issued, similar to the titles borne by the others, was, “Catalogus Senatus Facultatis, et eorum qui munera et officia gesserunt, quique alicujus gradus laurea donati sunt in Facultate Medicinae in Universitate Harvardiana constituta, Cantabrigiae in Republica Massachusettensi.  Cantabrigiae:  Sumptibus Societatis.  MDCCCXXXIII.  Sanguinis circulationis post patefactionem Anno CCV.”

The Prefaces to the Catalogues were written in Latin, the character of which might well be denominated piggish.  In the following translations by an esteemed friend, the beauty and force of the originals are well preserved.

Preface to the Catalogue of 1824.

“To many, the first edition of the Medical Faculty Catalogue was a wonderful and extraordinary thing.  Those who boasted that they could comprehend it, found themselves at length terribly and widely in error.  Those who did not deny their inability to get the idea of it, were astonished and struck with amazement.  To certain individuals, it seemed to possess somewhat of wit and humor, and these laughed immoderately; to others, the thing seemed so absurd and foolish, that they preserved a grave and serious countenance.

“Now, a new edition is necessary, in which it is proposed to state briefly in order the rise and progress of the Medical Faculty.  It is an undoubted matter of history, that the Medical Faculty is the most ancient of all societies in the whole world.  In fact, its archives contain documents and annals of the Society, written on birch-bark, which are so ancient that they cannot be read at all; and, moreover, other writings belong to the Society, legible it is true, but, by ill-luck, in the words of an unknown and long-buried language, and therefore unintelligible.  Nearly all the documents of the Society have been reduced to ashes at some time amid the rolling years