[2][3] The society's council rotate annually and comprises the president, two vice-presidents, the treasurer, the executive and two honorary secretaries, the archivist and nine councillors.

Subsequently, presidents have frequently been high-profile medical professionals, including Thomas Hodgkin, D'Arcy Power, Lord Horder, Cecil Wakeley and Sir Zachary Cope.

The Society remained exclusively male until 1956, when women were permissible to join in only as guests, eventually being allowed full membership from 1964 under the Presidency of Dr. D. Geraint James.

Past speakers have included surgeon (and brother of economist John Maynard Keynes) Geoffrey Keynes, Nobel Prize winners for work on penicillin Ernest Chain and Howard Florey, co-discoverer of DNA Francis Crick and heart transplant pioneer Christiaan Barnard.

[8] The Royal College of Physicians of London holds an annual lecture established by William Harvey in 1656 called the Harveian Oration.

The Harvey Society, found in 1905, is based in New York City and hosts an annual lecture series on recent advances in biomedical sciences.