Percivall Pott

He served his apprenticeship with Edward Nourse, assistant surgeon to St Bartholomew's Hospital, and in 1736 was admitted to the Barbers' Company and licensed to practise. He became assistant surgeon to St Bartholomew's in 1744 and full surgeon from 1749 till 1787. The first surgeon of his day in England, excelling even his pupil, John Hunter, on the practical side, be introduced various important innovations in procedure, doing much to abolish the extensive use of escharotics and the actual cautery that was prevalent when he began his career. A particular form of fracture of the ankle which he sustained through a fall from his horse in 1756 is still described as Pott's fracture[?], and his book, Some few Remarks upon Fractures and Dislocations, published in 1768 and translated into French and Italian, had a far-reaching influence in Great Britain and France. His name was written in annals of medcine also because of Pott's disease. He gave an excellent clinical description in his Remarks on that kind of Palsy of the Lower Limbs. Among his other writings the most noteworthy are A Treatise on Ruptures (1756), and Chirurgical Observations. Pott was the first man in history to identify a cause of cancer - chimney-sweep's cancer of the scrotum from repeated contamination with soot.