| Abstract: | Surgery today owes much to the services of early practitioners who made their advances as a result of wide clinical experience and compassion. This two‐part series explores the careers of Percivall Pott and William Arbuthnot Lane. Percivall Pott was born in 1714 in east London. Pott was apprenticed to Nourse of St. Bartholomew's Hospital at 15 years of age. After gaining licence to practise in 1736, Pott remained as surgeon to the hospital from 1745 till his retirement aged 73. After falling from his horse in 1756, Pott sustained a fracture of his leg, confining him to bed. During this time, he wrote on his own fracture, as well as hernia and head injuries. Several diseases are named after him, viz. Pott's fracture, Pott's puffy tumour, and Pott's disease of the spine. He was the first to describe cancer of the scrotum in chimney sweepers, as the earliest occupational cancer.   |
