‘received the diploma testifying his skill and impowering him to practice.’ He was registered in the books of the Barber-Surgeons' Company as living in Fenchurch Street, but he had removed to Bow Lane before 1 May 1739, when he ‘tooke the livery [of the Barber-Surgeons' Company], and paid the usual fine of 10l. for so doing.’ He acted as steward of the livery dinner of the company in 1741 and as steward of the mayor's feast in 1744. In 1745 the United Company of Barber-Surgeons was dissolved, and thereupon Pott naturally allied himself with the surgeons.
Pott took an active part in the affairs of the Corporation of Surgeons from its very commencement. On 5 July 1753 the court of assistants of the newly formed company elected Pott and Hunter the first masters of, or lecturers on, anatomy. He became a member of the court of assistants on 23 Dec. 1756 in place of Legard Sparham, deceased, and he was elected a member of the court of examiners on 6 Aug. 1761, to fill the place rendered vacant by the resignation of William Singleton. On 7 July 1763 he became under or second warden of the company; on 5 July 1764 he was promoted to be upper or first warden, and on 4 July 1765 he succeeded Robert Young as master or governor of the Corporation of Surgeons.
Pott became assistant-surgeon to St. Bartholomew's Hospital on 14 March 1744, ‘in room of Joseph Webb, appointed surgeon and guide to Kingsland Hospital,’ and on 30 Nov. 1749 he was made full surgeon to the charity ‘in place of James Phillips.’ Pott introduced many improvements into the art of surgery during his long tenure of this office, rendering its practice more humane and less painful both to patient and surgeon. Earle tells us that, for some years after Pott became surgeon to St. Bartholomew's Hospital, escharotic dressings were continually employed, and that the actual cautery was in such frequent use that, at the times when the surgeons visited the hospital, it was regularly heated and prepared as part of the necessary apparatus. It was only by Pott's constant endeavours that these abominable methods were discarded.
In 1756 an accident befell him which rendered his name of world-wide fame. ‘As he was riding in Kent Street, Southwark, he was thrown from his horse, and suffered a compound fracture of the leg, the bone being forced through the integuments. Conscious of the dangers attendant on fractures of this nature, and thoroughly aware how much they may be increased by rough treatment or improper position, he would not suffer himself to be moved until he had made the necessary dispositions. He sent to Westminster, then the nearest place, for two chairmen to bring their poles, and patiently lay on the cold pavement, it being the middle of January, till they arrived. In this situation he purchased a door, to which he made them nail their poles. When all was ready he caused himself to be laid on it, and was carried through Southwark, over London Bridge, to Watling Street, near St. Paul's, where he had lived for some time. … At a consultation of surgeons the case was thought so desperate as to require immediate amputation. Mr. Pott, convinced that no one could be a proper judge in his own case, submitted to their opinion, and the proper instruments were actually got ready, when Mr. Nourse (his former master and then colleague at St. Bartholomew's Hospital), who had been prevented from coming sooner, fortunately entered the room. After examining the limb he conceived there was a possibility of preserving it; an attempt to save it was acquiesced in, and succeeded.’
The term ‘Pott's fracture’ is still commonly applied to that particular variety of broken ankle which he sustained on this occasion. During the leisure consequent on the necessary confinement Pott first turned to authorship, and planned and partly executed his ‘Treatise on Ruptures.’ He thus began to write at the age of 43, by a curious coincidence the exact age at which his illustrious pupil, John Hunter, published his first book. But from that time onwards he issued a long series of books, and his writings revolutionised the practice of surgery in this country. In 1764 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society.
While he lived in Watling Street he instituted a course of lectures for the pupils attending his practice at St. Bartholomew's Hospital. This course was at first private, but from 1765, the year in which he succeeded Nourse as senior surgeon, it was delivered publicly to all the students at St. Bartholomew's Hospital. These lectures, at first given with hesitation and reserve, afterwards became the most celebrated in London, and served to disseminate his views and methods of treatment throughout Europe.
He purchased a house near Lincoln's Inn Fields in 1769, and lived in it until he moved in 1777 to Prince's Street, Hanover Square, when the retirement of Sir Cæsar Hawkins materially increased his already extensive practice. He was living in this house when, in conjunction with W. C. Cruikshank in 1783, he treated Dr. Johnson for the sarcocele which troubled the doctor's declining years.
