The Croonian Medal and Lecture is a prestigious award, a medal, and lecture given at the invitation of the Royal Society and the Royal College of Physicians. Among the papers of William Croone at his death in 1684, was a plan to endow a single lectureship at both the Royal Society and the Royal College of Physicians. His wife provided the bequest in 1701 specifying that it was "for the support of a lecture and illustrative experiment for the advancement of natural knowledge on locomotion, or (conditionally) of such other subjects as, in the opinion of the President for the time being, should be most useful in promoting the objects for which the Royal Society was instituted". One lecture was to be delivered by a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and the other, on the nature and laws