POTT, PERCIVAL, was born in London in 1713. He received the first rudiments of his education at a private school at Darne in Kent; and became an apprentice to Mr Nourse, one of the surgeons of St Bartholomew's hospital; of which hospital, in 1741-5, he was elected an assistant surgeon, and in 1749 appointed one of the principal surgeons. In 1746, he married the daughter of Robert Crottenden, E-q. His first publication is said to have been planned in 1736, during his confinement in consequence of a compound fracture of the leg: from that time, his pen was seldom long unemployed. His practice and his reputation were now rapidly increasing: in 1764, he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society; and afterwards was complimented with honorary diplomas from the Royal Colleges of Surgeons at Edinburgh and in Ireland. In 1787, he resigned the office of surgeon to St Bartholomew's hospital, "after having served it (as he used to say), man and boy, half a century;" and on the 22d of December 1788, after an illness of eight days, he expired.
"The labours of the greatest part of his life (says Mr Earle, who published his Chirurgical works), were without relaxation; an increasing family required his utmost exertion: of late years he had a villa at Neasden; and in the autumn usually passed a month at Bath or at the sea-side. Thus, though he gathered, as he expressed it, some of the fruit of the garden which he had planted as he went along, and always lived in a generous and hospitable manner, at the same time bestowing on four sons and four daughters a liberal and necessarily expensive education, and applying large sums to their establishment during his lifetime, he left an ample provision for them at his decease. Among his papers was found, what he had often mentioned, a small box, containing a few pieces of money, being the whole which he ever received from the wreck of his father's fortune. With this was deposited an exact account of every individual fee which a long life of business had produced—abundant evidence of well spent time, and the industrious application of abilities, to which the rex angusta domi, at the commencement, probably acted more powerfully as an incentive than as an obstacle."