The Bradshaw Lectures are prestigious lectureships given at the invitation of the Royal College of Physicians

Royal College of Physicians

The Royal College of Physicians of London was founded in 1518 as the College of Physicians by royal charter of King Henry VIII in 1518 - the first medical institution in England to receive a royal charter...

 and the Royal College of Surgeons of England

Royal College of Surgeons of England

The Royal College of Surgeons of England is an independent professional body and registered charity committed to promoting and advancing the highest standards of surgical care for patients, regulating surgery, including dentistry, in England and Wales...

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They were instituted in 1880 by bequests of £1000 to the Royal College of Physicians and a similar sum to the Royal College of Surgeons. The bequests were made by the will of Mrs Sally Hall Bradshaw, dated 6 Sept 1875, proved on 26 Aug 1880, to institute a lecture to be given annually on or near the 18th of August at each college and to be called the Bradshaw Lecture in memory of her husband William Wood Augustus Fitz-Milton Bradshaw. She desired that the lecture should be connected with medicine or surgery, and that the choice of the lecturer should rest with the President of the College for the time being to maintain her husband’s name in good repute by associating it with the advancement of the science which he loved, and to testify her gratitude for the happiness which she owed to him.

List of Past Lecturers at Royal College of Physicians

List of Past Lecturers at Royal College of Surgeons of England

The lecture is biennial (annual until 1993) on a topic in the field of surgery, customarily given by a senior member of the Council on or about the day preceding the second Thursday of December. (Given in alternate years, with the Hunterian Oration given in the intervening years).