The Bradshaw Lectures are prestigious lectureships given at the invitation of the Royal College of Physicians and the Royal College of Surgeons of England. 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 September 1875, proved on 26 August 1880, to institute a lecture to be given annually on or near 18 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